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BLINDFOLD 


By 

ORRICK JOHNS 

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NEW YORK 
LIEBER & LEWIS 

1923 




Copyright, 1923 
By Libber & Lewis 



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Printed in the U. S. A. 

JIIL16 73 >. 

©C1A752141 







TO MY 
FATHER 

George S. Johns, 

IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
OF UNFAILING SYMPATHY 


















BLINDFOLD 




BLINDFOLD 


I 

Ellen Sydney’s first garden in tlie Meadow- 
burn’s new American borne had made a fair be¬ 
ginning. She was at work one afternoon bending 
over the bed of sweet peas, hooking the baby 
tendrils to the wire mesh of the frame, with an 
occasional pat of the soft dark earth beneath— 
the earth which Bennet, the youngest of the family, 
had brought by the basketful from a distance, to 
enrich the yellow clay that filled in the property. 

School was just out and as she worked Bennet 
banged into the hall, threw down his books 
and rushed forth again with a shout to join his 
comrades up the street. They were building a 
“switch-back railway” from the second story rear 
window of a neighbour’s house. She could just 
glimpse the murderous rickety scaffolding of it 
through the small leaves of the alley poplars. 

Fastening up the last of the tendrils to the wire, 
Ellen heard Mrs. Osprey’s shrill voice calling from 
quite half a block away to one of the Osprey boys. 
She could not restrain a smile at the familiar 


summons. 


1 


2 


BLINDFOLD 


“Poor woman,” thought she, “they do worry 
her.” But she would no more have thought of 
pitying Mrs. Osprey actually, than of feeling sorry 
for Her Majesty Queen Alexandra, whom many 
years in Canada had taught her to believe next 
to the angels themselves. 

As she turned from the garden she heard a 
still more familiar voice and Potter Osprey came 
through the gate. 

“Hello, Ellen, mind my coming over?” 

“Oh, no! I’ve got to go in, though. Come in 
the kitchen, I’m not very busy.” She had in fact 
three easy hours before her, with dinner practi¬ 
cally prepared and a little ironing to do before she 
put the dishes in the stove. Ironing was quite 
pleasant if you had some one to talk to while you 
did it. 

“Vacation’s only six weeks off now,” Potter 
said as they walked up to the house. “Ain’t that 
great! I hate school anyway.” 

“Ah, Potter, when you are doing so well at it! 
Milly told me about the debates. She said you 
were fine in them.” 

The monthly school debates were a point of 
pride with him, and he betrayed a momentary em¬ 
barrassment. He had quite lost himself in the 
vainglory of winning two of them in succession, or 
of being on the winning side both times. He had 
regretted that while they were in progress, especi¬ 
ally while he was on his feet, everybody he knew 


BLINDFOLD 


3 


had not been in the audience. So many people 
were not. The thing that he feared in talking 
about them to Ellen was that he would reveal 
his satisfaction. So Milly had been gossiping 
about them outside? That pleased him. Milly 
was in the class below him, which sat in the same 
room. 

He recovered his composure and spoke as though 
of an ordinary matter. 

“ Pshaw, the debates ain’t really school. 
They’re different. . . . But look, Ellen, all the lots 
around here are almost forests of weeds in the 
summer. It’s great! You can hide in them, and 
everything. They get over six feet high. And 
there’s woods only a mile out west there, to swim 
and camp in. If you have time we can walk there 
some day.” 

Ellen’s face brightened at the prospect. 

i ‘But it gets hot here in the summer,” he went 
on, 64 awful hot—not like Winnipeg. You won’t 
like that. ’ ’ 

“Oh, I’ve lived in N’Orleans. It’s lots hotter 
there.” 

“Yes, that’s so. That’s way down south, ain’t 
it? I always think of you coming from Winnipeg. 
Bennet talks about it all the time. He’s a Britisher 
all right. ’ ’ 

Ellen replied warmly. 

“Well, he shouldn’t be, even if they were born 
in Canada. His father says he’s going to stand 


4 


BLINDFOLD 


by this country now, because it gives them a good 
living and always has. He’s going to make them 
all citizens.” 

Potter laughed. He was sitting perched up on 
the kitchen table, his small feet dangling beneath 
it and his cap in his hand. 

“I told Bennet we licked England twice and he 
got hot under the collar. He’s funny. Did you 
like it better up north?” 

“ Yes, I guess I did. We used to have good times 
in Winnipeg. The fellows always in the house, 
my! It’ll be the same here after a while. Those 
two girls get a crowd coming pretty quick. Only 
we’ll never have snow like in Winnipeg. I did 
love the snow, such sledding and skating!” 

“That’s the ticket!” agreed Potter, and added 
with some disgust, “We hardly had one good 
skate last winter—soon as it’d freeze it’d thaw! 
But you should have seen the first winter we were 
here. Almost two months of ice! This house- 
wasn’t here then—hardly any in this row were, 
and gee, the way the wind used to blow! It 
changes around here fast. Kirk broke his arm 
falling through these joistses.” 

Potter swung down from the table and stood in 
front of the ironing board, smiling up at the tall 
woman, his hands in his pockets. 

“Say, Ellen, got something to eat? Just any¬ 
thing, you know—I’ll tell you why I want it.” 

Ellen put down her iron on the metal guard 


BLINDFOLD 5 

and went into the pantry. She returned with three 
powdered doughnuts on a plate. 

“Here,” she said laughing. “You’re always 
eating, Potter Osprey. Your mother told me I 
was spoiling your appetite for meals.” 

1 ‘ Thanks,’ ’ he said and went on between mouth¬ 
fuls. “I’ve been smoking. I thought something 
to eat would take my breath away.” 

“Well, if that’s what you came here for you can 
go right back home. You oughtn’t smoke—so 
there!” , 

Potter, however, did not stir; and for a time 
there was no sound except the thumping of 
Ellen’s iron on the thickly padded board. She 
was thumping harder than need be, because she 
was angry. She was often angry with him. Yet 
his prolonged visits with her in the kitchen or on 
the back stoop of a fine afternoon meant much to 
her. The family already teased her, calling young 
Osprey “Ellen’s pet.” Then Tom Meadowburn 
reminded them that “Ellen always had a pet. 
Remember Wolly Judson.” This sally caused an 
uproar. Wolly Judson had been a Winnipegian 
of sixty-eight, a town character, a tottering flirt, 
who had brought the current gossip regularly to 
Ellen’s door. 

Potter heard none of this chaffing, yet in his 
talks with her he betrayed a small opinion of the 
Meadowburns, all except his friend Bennet, with 
whom he sang in the choir. Once he told her in- 


6 


BLINDFOLD 


dignantly that she worked too hard, she was spoil¬ 
ing the whole family. Why didn’t the others do 
more? Ellen laughed heartily. She did not be¬ 
lieve any such thing. It was her lot to work, and 
keep at it until things were done. 

Ellen was neither by birth nor legal adoption a 
member of the Meadowburn household. She lived 
there, a fixture; and the principal advantages did 
accrue to the family. They obtained a willing, 
strong and tireless servant, modest and well-ap¬ 
pearing enough to be treated as a distant relative 
(and consequently not paid except when chance 
generosity dictated). She had been with the 
Meadowburns since she was twelve, learning by 
heart their various needs so that she could have 
administered to them in her sleep. She was now 
twenty-seven, a gaunt figure, black-eyed and above 
the middle height. The face would have been 
attractive but for the toughened swarthiness it had 
acquired, and the cheeks perceptibly sunken by the 
absence of jaw teeth. 

The Meadowburn children had grown up under 
her care, the two eldest girls being little more than 
babies at the time the orphan asylum in New Or¬ 
leans yielded her young and frightened body into 
the hands of Mrs. Meadowburn. Ellen had found 
time for those fretful and ill-tempered midgets, 
in addition to keeping the house spotless, launder¬ 
ing for six and cooking the meals. Mrs. Mea¬ 
dowburn had been left free to nurse a collection of 


BLINDFOLD 


7 


modern ills, and to dream of her youth as the dark 
beauty of a northwestern town. Since those days 
a morose gloom had settled upon her handsome, 
Indian-like face. Ellen had rarely known her to 
laugh at all. Even the smile with which she 
greeted her husband’s jokes was wan and half¬ 
hearted. 

It was to Ellen that Tom Meadowburn looked 
for the fullest appreciation of his comic genius and 
his masculine importance. Few men were more 
conscious of both than he, and even in those 
moments when the comic mask fell away com¬ 
pletely, there was something in the solemn air of 
pompous judgment and disciplinary wisdom which 
to any one but his adoring brood would have 
seemed most funny. 

For Tom Meadowburn the world, whether of 
New Orleans or Winnipeg, or the new city that 
had lately taken them in, was a place where he and 
the wife and children were 4 ‘getting on.” The 
Meadowburn household was, in his mind, some¬ 
thing very much like heaven, himself presiding. 
For Ellen, as he often said, it was a refuge under 
his protecting arm, wherein she need never come to 
harm nor suffer want. And to her credit she be¬ 
lieved him and worked all the harder to please him. 

Physically Meadowburn was a tall stout man 
with a heavy, pink, unwhiskered face, the pale eye¬ 
lashes and tow hair being lighter than his skin, 
and the small, quick eyes a transparent, hardly 


8 


BLINDFOLD 


perceptible blue. As a humourist be was not one 
of your torrential and generous laughers. He was 
sly and dry, a wrinkle, the flicker of a smile, a 
knowing arch of the eyebrows being his favourite 
manner of accentuating his point. He was in the 
habit of twitting Ellen on the subject of marriage. 

“Now then, my girl,” he would say, “what are 
you keeping from us? What have you got up 
your sleeve? Didn’t I hear you come in a little 
late last night? Walking, eh—of course, not 
alonef We wouldn’t permit you to walk alone.” 

“Ellen went to the drugstore for some medicine 
for me, last night, Tom,” interposed his wife. 

“Well, well, Ellen,” he went on, “you must 
remember you’re perfectly free. We wouldn’t 
keep you from marrying when the right man comes 
along. ’ ’ 

“Yes, and maybe I will marry, sooner than you 
think! You watch out, Mr. Meadowburn!” 

The pleasure of this stock joke lay in the fact 
that none of the Meadowburns believed there was 
danger of Ellen marrying, of any one caring to 
marry her, at least, whose social position would 
suit her. For she did not have kitchen-maid 
standards, as they knew. And she believed there 
was no danger either. She felt very old. . . . 

It was into this somewhat harsh and lonely 
existence that Potter had thrust his genial, boyish 
appearance, and by some strange affinity of com¬ 
radeship, they had taken to each other at once, 


BLINDFOLD 


9 


He too, as slie was soon to learn, was lonely and 
cherished his dreams; and it comforted her to 
have a champion—even so young and small a 
champion as he. Was he so young and small? 
There were times when he frightened her with 
flashes of grown-up speech. It did not always 
seem quite nice, quite appropriate. For example, 
one evening when they were talking about per¬ 
fectly ordinary matters, he burst out: 

“You’re like Christ, Ellen. If He could be on 
earth He wouldn’t love Dr. Minor or any of those 
people in the church. He’d pick you.” 

Her first thought about this was that it was 
deliberately bad, as bad as his smoking and his 
score of other boy tricks. It was blasphemous and 
wildly untrue. She sent him away in disgrace, 
much discomfited and hurt. Probably this rude¬ 
ness of her own was what brought her so swiftly 
around to forgiveness, or it may be that she came 
to look kindly on his tribute. In any event, she 
gave Bennet a note for him, a queer, misspelled, 
dignified note. . . . 

When Potter returned she told him that he 
“must not think of Jesus as a person but as God, 
and that was the end of it.” 




n 


The next Spring, which followed on the heels 
of his fourteenth birthday, held a wonder for 
Potter Osprey such as he had not experienced be¬ 
fore. Until now the green buds and soft winds 
had meant a 'time for the surreptitious stripping 
off of shoes and stockings after school (and out of 
sight of home), the agonizing anticipation of three 
long months of holidaying, and the making of 
limitless plans for outdoor fun. This year he 
welcomed the bright weeks not as a rowdy boy, 
but with a conscious relish that came from a 
deeper source within him. 

The Spring itself, as if it also were filled with 
a sense of unusual importance, was precocious. 
When Potter, late every afternoon, ambled along 
the several blocks of blatantly new sidewalks that 
led to the church, the grass hid the softened brown 
earth with an abundance of delicate colour 
wherever feet had not trod, the robins and 
squirrels skipped perilously about the pavements 
and lawns oblivious of savage man, and exultant 
banks of snowballs escaping over the picturesque 
shingle- and iron-railed barriers of the old 
Clemons place, were just on the point of chang¬ 
ing from their pale shade of willow bark into 

10 


BLINDFOLD 11 

round fluffs of dazzling white as big as a boy’s 
head. 

These Lenten afternoons were moments of soli¬ 
tary poetry in his days. The still church, the long 
slanting rays which came through the coloured 
glass windows to the west; the faint perfumes 
that rose into the ogival shadows above the nave, 
emanating from the hair and handkerchiefs and 
bodices of lady worshippers, who made up the 
majority (and the subtle pleasure with which he 
felt the eyes of these fine women on his broaden¬ 
ing back as he walked down to the chancel carry¬ 
ing the offertory); the pervasive, vibrant drone 
of the organ, which had always been like a physical 
caress to him; and the saintly beaked profile of the 
rector, Dr. Minor, with its high, peeled brows, and 
black, unruly hair, dominating an almost chinless 
jaw; and, finally, between the breathing of the 
organ pipes, and the shrill singing of the feminine 
congregation, Dr. Minor’s broad Virginia accents 
and consoling overtones and melancholy quavers 
—all these sensations produced a mingling of 
peace and the awareness of sacrifice, which was 
like a bath of goodness. 

The church itself was charming to look at, 
built in the late ’eighties of shingles now coloured 
a warm brown by many rains, and properly vine- 
hung. The little building with its limited open 
meadow and well-grown trees drew him at times 
when he had no particular business there. It was 


12 


BLINDFOLD 


a favourite place to read. Often lie would arrive 
an hour or more before the service and sit huddled 
up in one of the corners of the deep verandah, 
intent upon his pastime, until the brisk step of 
the rector sounded on the boards below; and if 
Dr. Minor happened to espy him he would be 
conducted cheerily into the study, while the lanky 
priest put on his vestments and asked him 
questions about his work at school and the health 
of his “dear mother,” who, much to the clergy¬ 
man’s disappointment, came almost never to the 
services. 

These innocent confidences sometimes went so 
far as a mild spiritual examination which had 
more significance than its casualness indicated. 
Minor regarded young Osprey as promising 
material for the ministry. 

“The type for scholarship and consecration,” 
he told his wife. “A sensitive boy, thoughtful and 
retiring—Oh, manly, manly enough! A little con¬ 
viction would turn that into spiritual leadership. 
His family could do nothing better than give him 
a seminary training. And a part of our duty, my 
dear, is to be fishers of men, to look out for new 
recruits to bring under His banner.” 

Minor loved to roll forth militant symbols in his 
reflections upon the mission of the Church. His 
early gods had been the deeply pious heroes of 
the South. Stonewall Jackson and General Lee 
took rank with him very little below the Apostles. 


BLINDFOLD 


13 


There was one other who shared this secret 
ambition for Potter—Ellen Sydney—until a recent 
incident in which he had figured shook her 
faith. 

This affair produced something of a scandal in 
the Osprey family. Searching one day through 
the shelves of an old closet for one of his brother 
Kirk’s discarded school books which it was now 
his turn to use, the hoy had come across a half 
dozen large, handsomely hound portfolios. He 
had drawn one out and leaved it over, fascinated 
on the instant. The sheets were of lovely texture, 
beautifully printed, and the covers of a flexible, 
warm-toned, heavy parchment. He felt a sense of 
incomparable luxury in the very touch of the books. 

The contents were no less absorbing. Between 
the pages of French text were reproductions of 
paintings hung in the Paris salons of the mid- 
’nineties, the majority of them nudes of that 
languishing and silken type beloved by the French 
school of that day, the studio renderings of a 
flock of anonymous Bouguereaus. Forgetting his 
search for the school hooks, Potter took the vol¬ 
umes to an attic room where he consulted them 
many times in the following weeks, and a collection 
of nude sketches came from his pencil, copied 
sometimes from the originals and sometimes 
attempted from memory. 

The upshot of it was that his mother swooped 
upon him one day just as he was finishing a 


14 


BLINDFOLD 


particularly elaborate drawing. It was taken from 
him and shown in excited secrecy to John Osprey. 

Osprey was cut of a different cloth from 
Meadowburn. In a ruminant, half-serious talk (a 
ray of amusement flickered in his eye on actually 
facing the boy alone) he quoted the Scripture ac¬ 
cording to St. Paul, and enjoined him to resist 
putting away childish things until he was on the 
way to become a man. Then he dropped a sly 
hint that if the youthful artist really had to draw 
improper subjects it would be a good thing to keep 
them from his mother. There was other good 
advice to the effect that it was both harder and 
more practical to draw people the way they were 
usually seen in life, but this passed largely over 
Potter’s head. 

He promptly diagnosed the interview as a vindi¬ 
cation and he saw no harm in telling the adven¬ 
ture to Ellen, but to his utter surprise she was 
inexpressibly shocked; so much so that she left 
him on the Meadowburn steps without even a good¬ 
night. 

As he had related the story, coolly, indeed boast¬ 
fully to her, the feeling came over her that the 
next time she raised her eyes to observe him she 
would see a coarse, swarthy young man with stub¬ 
ble whiskers whom she ought to be afraid of. The 
contrast between this fancy and his actual appear¬ 
ance was a little laughable—yet the notion of his 
interest in a woman’s body, a thing he could not, 



BLINDFOLD 15 

as she reasoned, naturally have seen or even been 
strongly moved to see, was more than she could 
grasp. 

For many days she watched him passing the 
house with other boys, his eyes casting furtive and 
unhappy glances at its windows, and hardened 
her heart. Then she could bear it no longer, and 
once more Potter received a scarcely legible, lady¬ 
like note of prim forgiveness. 

To-night he was to see her for the first time 
since that event. . . . 

In Creve Coeur suburb a clear division existed 
between the old and the new, marked by a certain 
trolly line. Northward lay the flat, banal commons 
in which the Ospreys and the Meadowburns lived, 
but to the south were houses mellowed by long 
custom, set deep in cool lawns, and facing arched 
avenues of maples and elms under which one trod 
decaying and rickety pine-board walks or crossed 
the tremulous bridges spanning a serpentine creek 
that drained the valley. 

The quaint modesty of Florissant lane, its use¬ 
lessness and hidden charm—the thick maples and 
high shrubbery cutting off even the sight of neigh¬ 
bouring windows—made it a fairy road, a retreat 
in which Potter had already learned to spend fine 
mornings of October and May when his mother 
thought him safely at school. As for Ellen, her 
first autumn glimpse of it, nearly a year ago, had 
taken her back to greener memories in the north. 


16 


BLINDFOLD 


She could never walk there too often; it was as 
near to complete demoralization and unbounded 
luxury as anything her starved imagination 
could picture. 

Ordinarily they sat upon the steep terraced 
slope at the end of the lane, whence one could look 
down its leaf-fretted vista, or peer over one’s 
shoulder into the sombre depths of the rarely- 
visited Florissant place, but to-night he was more 
venturesome. He led her through the path behind 
the wall of Annunciation’s big enclosure, until 
they came to the end of the terrace. Beyond was 
an open field, once the pasture of the Florissants, 
and still a part of the property, empty and un¬ 
used. In its centre through the dusk loomed a 
dark little hillock clustered with poplars and fir- 
trees. 

It was not hard to believe oneself continents 
away from the noise of any familiar street or the 
lights of Creve Coeur houses. Directly fronting 
them lay the dim mass of Annunciation, its half 
dozen French turrets and many spires floating 
out of the treetops into crystalline starlight. Pot¬ 
ter had often sat in that very spot and pondered 
on the mystery of this religious stillness, on the 
utter distance which separated its life from any he 
had known, its community of young and vital 
beauty sternly and perhaps rebelliously subordi¬ 
nated to withered holiness. By a paradox of the 


BLINDFOLD 


17 


law of boyhood, the girls in the convent—boarders 
from comfortable families everywhere in the states 
—were the subject of vulgar joking among the 
youngsters thereabouts. 

To Ellen the convent was not benign; it was a 
little terrifying and monstrous. All her life she 
had been awestruck by anything that suggested the 
gigantic and august power of Rome, and her head 
was full of legends concerning that religion and 
its devotees. Superstition had required of her that 
she regard them—not as individuals but in the 
mass—as a sinister species apart from ordinary 
people. 

Potter remarked that when there was bright 
moonlight the steep slate pitches of the convent 
roof looked as though they were sheeted in snow. 

“There’s lots more of those places in Canada 
than here,” said she. “They’re not all that they 
should be, either. Think of sending young girls 
there!” 

“Why not!” he asked. 

She now regretted her outburst and was an¬ 
noyed at his question. She answered primly: 

“Why, I wouldn’t tell you, of course.” 

He laughed, unconcerned and superior. 

“Pshaw, I know what you mean. I’ve heard 
those stories too—about nuns being in love with 
priests. But I don’t believe them.” 

“Oh, you don’t!” inquired Ellen sarcastically. 


18 


BLINDFOLD 


It was not that she did not think it admirable of 
him to dislike believing evil of people, but one need 
not go so far as to defend Catholics. . . . 

“No,” he said. “You know why!” 

“Well, why, smarty!” 

“Because even people outside of such places, 
convents and the like, even people who are grown 
up and free to do as they please—well, they never 
do anything they want to do. I mean things that 
just pop into their heads to do.” 

“Ah, don’t they!” asked Ellen, by this* time 
amused► “And how are you so sure they don’t!” 

“I just know. They’re too dog-goned cow¬ 
ardly. ’ ’ 

“Well!” she exclaimed, “that’s a fine thing to be 
calling people who behave themselves!” 

“Then they don’t think of anything bad that 
they want to do,” he persisted. “You wouldn’t 
call that being good, would you, Ellen! Pshaw, 
what’s the credit in that!” 

“It’s well for them they don’t think of such 
things,” she declared. “To hear you, a person 
would believe you wanted to be tempted. ’ ’ 

“No, I hate it, honestly,” he replied, and she 
felt that he was trying to speak truly of himself. 
“I used to say that part of the Lord’s prayer, 
about ‘lead us not into temptation,’ over twice. 
I did, for a long time. Because, you see, I’m really 
tempted—always, every minute.” 

He paused after this announcement, which, in 



BLINDFOLD 


19 


spite of his sincerity, had a note of pride, and Ellen 
broke in, thinking that the moment had come to 
speak of what was most in her mind. 

“Potter, yon haven’t been making any more of 
those pictures, have you?” 

She felt him shift quickly to the defensive. 

“Yes, I have,” he said. “I’ve finished two 
more.” 

“Well, I’m ashamed of you.” 

“Why do you mind them so much, Ellen?” 

“You don’t have to ask me why.” 

“But I do, because my father didn’t think 
they were bad. He only lectured me for show!” 
He chuckled at the recollection. 

“Ah, Potter, your father is a grown man! Men 
do lots of things that you shouldn’t think about. 
You’re just a child. Those pictures! What’s the 
good of them anyway? Nice people wouldn’t have 
them around.” 

“Some people would!” he declared stoutly. 
“They’re beautiful, or my father wouldn’t have 
kept them . . . and the one I’ve just finished is 
the best, oh, lots the best I’ve done!” 

She sensed a strain of profound unhappiness in 
his voice, and all her instincts flew to soothe the 
hurt. 

“I don’t mean to be hard on you, Potter,” she 
said. “You worry me, that’s all. I can’t see why 
you bother about these things that other people 
never think of.” 


20 


BLINDFOLD 


“Aw,” tie said, “never mind, Ellen. I guess I 
don’t know what I want. It’s no fun being a boy 
when you’d like to be a man.” 

They both fell silent, listening to the trees 
chattering overhead like live things. The breeze 
that stirred them was growing chill, and Potter, 
responding to the kindlier tone of his companion, 
moved closer to her. His last words and this un¬ 
conscious movement of affection touched her. She 
put a rough, friendly hand on his arm, and they 
sat there in silence for a time. It was he who broke 
it. ... 

Suddenly a strange plea came pouring from his 
lips in a torrent of eager words, a plea that she 
all at once realized she had many times before 
dreaded—and laughed at herself for dread¬ 
ing. . . . She sat, scarcely breathing, with averted 
face. He ended abruptly, frightened at the sound 
of his own voice. She said nothing. Surely she 
understood him. What w^as she thinking? 

She turned toward him at last, and he found 
himself looking into her black eyes that glowed 
like coals despite the mantle of dusk. Her parted 
lips closed in a tight line. 

“Well,” she said, with slow emphasis, “if that’s 
what you mean, I’ll tell you this. I will never 
do such a thing.” 

She was on her feet in an instant, her tall body 
like a statue of rebuke crushing him in its shadow. 

“Come,” she said coldly. 


BLINDFOLD 21 

“Yes,” he replied. “I’m sorry, I’m awfully 
sorry, Ellen.” 

At that moment, as they started homeward from 
Florissant’s field with the darkness between them, 
her swishing, angry stride filling him with a new 
knowledge of mystery and awe, there was no doubt 
that they both meant what they said. But in 
Ellen a certain helplessness and fear were born. 
Struggle as she might from now on his very 
presence would be a menace, and his presence was 
more than ever a necessity. For the cry that he 
was uttering was one that her own heart under¬ 
stood. 

• ♦••••• 

So it happened that a few months later when the 
Osprey family were at a country hotel for the 
summer, he and Ellen met in the empty house and 
walked hand in hand through the rooms—her 
sworn promise whirling in his brain. She was stiff 
and awkward, but he was in high spirits, perhaps 
a little hysterical, fondly imagining he was enter¬ 
ing upon a new paradise of experience. . . . 


Ill 


Emmet Roget, twenty, and Potter Osprey, nine¬ 
teen, both juniors at the University, were sitting 
naked one afternoon on the long parapet which 
formed one of the banks of Milton’s abandoned 
quarry. Behind them the stone wall fell away a 
sheer twenty feet to the gulch below. In front, 
licking the tops of the three-foot barrier, lay the 
broad sheet of deep, clear water. Their white 
bodies dripped opaline flakes in the sunset. From 
time to time they shivered in the chilly late Sep¬ 
tember wind. 

A pale, luminous dory of a moon floated low in 
the delicately blue and pink expanse of sky that 
lay over the town. The surrounding flat country 
was infinitely still, infinitely peaceful. 

Potter suddenly droned forth in the melancholy 
baritone the two affected when reading Swinburne 
and other modern poets: 

*‘ The wandering moon, an optimistic sprite 

Etched a pale border ’round the face of night. ...” 

Emmet was silent for a moment, and then as 
though the sound of the quotation had travelled 
to him from a distance, burst out: 

“Gosh, man, where did you get that*?” 

22 


BLINDFOLD 23 

The other reached over boisterously and clapped 
his friend’s shoulder. 

“A trial of my own! All you need to be a poet 
is to suffer from insomnia, the way I did the other 
night. ’ ’ 

4 ‘Well, you can write.” 

“Eh? But I’d so much rather paint.” 

“Better look out. You may have more talent 
for writing than for painting.” Potter sensed a 
criticism in the remark, which he privately re¬ 
sented. 

“No, the thing I’ll never be able to do is the 
thing I’m going to do.” 

Emmet did not reply at once, and his sleepy 
blue eyes, long and narrow between the lids, rested 
upon an indefinable point of distance. The wind 
ruffled his dark curly hair that grew low on the 
brow and temples. He was the handsomer of the 
two. 

“Damn specialists and specialism,” he said. 
“I keep thinking about a synthesis of the arts. 
Take the theatre, for example. Why not do some¬ 
thing like Wagner did—in a lighter, more lyric 
vein? Bring all the arts together and create a 
new art? I hate this little business of one man 
with a pen, one man with a brush and another 
with a piano, none of them understanding each 
other. ’ ’ 

“A synthesis of the arts is contradictory,” said 
Osprey. “Only Nature can accomplish it, at any 


24 


BLINDFOLD 


rate, and Nature and art are sworn enemies. 
Nature takes a tree and gives it form and colour; 
its leaves rustle and its branches are wood-winds. 
Then in certain lights the tree will have the elu¬ 
sive, the startling quality of poetry. There you 
have sculpture, painting, music and literature— 
hut it isn’t art, and, thank God, art never will be 
such a pudding.” 

“Nevertheless,” replied Roget, without contro¬ 
versy and as if to himself, “Nevertheless some¬ 
thing can be done that way. What about the 
church in Renaissance Italy and elsewhere? That 
was a synthesis—a man didn’t paint just to be 
painting something of his own. He painted for 
God’s sake.” 

It was really cold by now, and a moment later 
they were hastily dressing. Roget murmured: 

“ ‘The wandering moon, an optimistic sprite, 
etched a pale border ’round the face of night.’ 
Ce n’est pas mal. It’s pictorial and yet it’s liter¬ 
ary too. Perhaps you will use words to fix your 
notions for painting. What’s that, in a sense, 
but synthesis, old-timer?” he finished jubilantly. 

They went home in the dusk. These were the 
perfect hours college gave them. . . . 

The rural University town of the central states, 
in the period when electric lighting and telephones 
were young, when the automobile was as yet a 
rarity, and the popular senior took his best girl 
out riding Sundays behind a smart livery tandem, 



BLINDFOLD 


25 


may have been hideous to modern eyes with its 
muddy streets, its wooden dwellings and its old- 
time murky brick and brownstone halls, but it 
had a mellow and quiet charm that comported well 
with the spirit of scholarship. 

This charm we may assume has been swept away 
forever. Gasoline and commercial growth, endow¬ 
ments, tudorized architecture, prohibition, short- 
skirted and long-headed women, energetic chancel¬ 
lors, a wealthier class of students, up-to-date 
burgher emporiums, moving picture palazzos, 
Grecian banks, and other vanities of the wicked 
age have hidden that erstwhile scene, with its air 
of leisure and moderation, beneath a slick financial 
veneer that nothing but the fall of federal empire 
and the end of progress will ever wipe off. 

When Potter Osprey arrived at the Athens of 
his native state it was still a function of one’s 
education to sit with the more or less elect twice 
a week in one of the three saloons and beer up, to 
the point where one navigated with difficulty the 
crossings of perilously high stepping stones and 
sometimes fell off into honest Athenian mud, which 
accumulated in viscid pools a foot deep. 

If one was only a freshman one might have to 
be contented with the private room of the “ Bucket 
of Blood’’—in a small rear section of which 
negroes were allowed to drink. Later on, you 
aimed for the private room at Steve Ball’s. The 
Y.M.C.A. and the Cadet Corps, the latter also a 


26 


BLINDFOLD 


moral training camp under the guise of military 
orders, throve, hut only among the groundlings. 
Two obscure fraternities out of twelve admitted 
members who would stoop to either, unless they 
were recommended by extraordinary prowess in 
other and more popular directions. 

In those days the dirt-stained farmers in jack- 
boots came to town Saturday morning with heavy 
carts of solid produce and departed at night-fall 
with almost equally heavy burdens of liquid joy. 
Afternoon strollers got their legs inextricably 
mixed with frantic, squealing hogs, and the 
smell of fresh manure rose to the fifth story of 
the Attic House, the tallest building on the local 
Broadway. Nowadays the farmers come snorting 
in in Cadillacs as often as they please and go home 
sober to tot up the double entry ledger with 
“mommer.” It is a changed world and undoubt¬ 
edly a more leisurely one for college disciplinary 
committees. 

Potter’s progress for a year had consisted in 
desperate efforts to escape his classes toward the 
end of the week, and to regain some hold on them 
at the beginning. As often happens, in spite of such 
practices, or perhaps because of the extra spurts 
of effort which they made necessary, he regularly 
stood well in his studies. His second year, how¬ 
ever, from the standpoint of conduct, was an im¬ 
provement over the first. Boget put in an appear¬ 
ance, and Osprey wearied somewhat of smutty 


BLINDFOLD 


27 


anecdotes, at the telling of which he was never 
skilful, and found a genuine interest growing in 
him for his language classes, and even for mathe¬ 
matics. 

In the entire town, beside the poet, there had 
been two people in whom he took an interest. One 
was a thin, rather angular but not uncomely in¬ 
structress in the art classes, who had come from 
New York and the Art Students’ League. Potter 
never probed her jolly, untroubled character very 
deeply, but she had a firm pencil stroke that he 
admired, and after a few talks with her he dis¬ 
covered that she breathed a freer air than the 
folk at Athens. To his fraternity brothers she 
was a frump, socially impossible. The feminine 
ideal of the day was the type of Miss Carroll of 
Carrollton, or Miss Brown from Brownhaven, rich 
father, proud virtue, sentimental possibilities and 
skill in the small town graces. 

His second admiration was a grey-haired, lean 
descendant of one of the oldest families in town,, 
a certain Oliver Pruyd, whose hawk-beaked face 
habitually wore an ironic grin. He was supposed 
to correspond with the metropolitan newspapers,, 
and his unofficial scholarship had achieved a cer¬ 
tain subrosa reputation. But his gains in his 
vocation were obviously slender and it was not 
his scholarship that brought him distinction, 
Pruyd was the only known addict to the use of 
morphine of whom the community could boast. 


28 


BLINDFOLD 


Osprey’s acquaintance with him had been casual. 
There was something sinister in Pruyd’s mocking 
expression and wrinkled, flavescent skin. Once, 
however, the younger man had achieved the brilli¬ 
ance of seeking him out in his small den over the 
pool and billiard hall, an indescribably neat and 
carefully arranged place, walled with books and 
piles of periodicals. Pruyd proved stimulating 
through three drinks, introducing many hints of 
literary sources and art lore hitherto strange to 
his companion. In the days of his family’s wealth 
he had ruined his usefulness by overlong haunting 
of the byways of Europe. 

Beginning with the fourth bourbon, however, 
the conversation descended to common levels, and 
the affair ended with their staggering down Broad¬ 
way like any two other louts expelled from Steve 
Ball’s at the closing hour. 

The only other consolation was the college 
library. In its actual precincts he was often un¬ 
comfortable because he was critically inspected by 
elderly persons at the desk for his curious taste 
in books. This alternately intimidated and en¬ 
raged him—and almost barred him from the use 
of the library. But from it he obtained Pater’s 
“Marius” and “Renaissance,” prints of Hogarth 
and Daumier and Michelangelo, “Tom Jones” 
and Balzac, Rousseau and Voltaire, stray bits of 
Wilde and Beardsley, and sprinklings of the 


BLINDFOLD 29 

French symbolists—shuddersome bombs in those 
days. 

The art class, one of the main objectives of his 
course (and the sop which his father had thrown 
him in urging him to take a well-rounded education 
before he settled down to his choice) was a puerile 
and primary bore after the first day, a repetition 
of the drawing of casts in charcoal, to which he had 
devoted two years at high school—with a prim 
sketch hour thrown in twice a week in the evening, 
the members of the class serving as models for 
fifteen minute studies. 

A few weeks after the conversation with Emmet 
Roget at Milton’s Pond, Potter was sitting with 
a full assemblage of his fraternity brothers at a 
breakfast of oatmeal swimming in blue milk, bis¬ 
cuits and rancid butter—which was all the coun¬ 
try town could furnish for some curious reason— 
and pork chops well immersed in grease. The 
house manager that season was an economist, 
loudly cursed at every meal, but immensely appre¬ 
ciated at the end of the month when the pro-rated 
statements came around. 

They were not a well-to-do nor a polished crowd. 
Raw-boned, plebeian, familiar—tobacco-chewers 
from the agricultural towns getting their first taste 
of a dress suit—they nevertheless had their pride 
and social standards. Potter, for example, though 
he liked them well enough—indeed had been daz- 


30 


BLINDFOLD 


zled by several of their more suave and persua¬ 
sive members during the first few weeks after his 
matriculation—was now, on account of those 
standards, nursing a private feud against the 
whole organization. The cause of this feud was 
their refusal to invite Emmet Roget to join, a man, 
thought he, better bred than any of them. They 
had taken in two gawky, mannerless Freshmen 
that year, sons of zinc barons from the mining 
counties, but they would not have Roget. 

Potter understood the reason well enough, but 
his resentment was all the more keen on that ac¬ 
count. Roget was rejected for personal charac¬ 
teristics which he himself would like to have ex¬ 
hibited oftener. He, also, did not quite belong 
in the group, and his influence, which for some 
reason was not inconsiderable, would have waned 
quickly had he been more frank about his own 
tastes. Roget did not lack that frankness. He 
was poor, but poverty was no bar in that frater¬ 
nity. The trouble was that he was not ashamed of 
having won the Whittier prize for verse in his 
freshman year. He had needed the money. He 
pronounced his name in the French manner and 
sat in a corner quietly cynical at dances. He was 
pretty generally admired by girls, but that could 
be a fault in a person you instinctively disliked; 
and he turned up one evening at a smoker wear¬ 
ing a wrist watch. In the first administration of 


BLINDFOLD 


31 


Roosevelt, a man was either a “good scout” or a 
“crumb,” and the best looking and brainiest chap 
on earth, if he did these things, was a crumb. 

The crowd was beginning to leave the breakfast 
table, some of them rushing off to eight o’clock 
classes and others moiling onto the porch for the 
first Bull Durham “drag” of the day, and bawl¬ 
ing a good-natured “hello, men” to students hur¬ 
rying past from other houses. 

Potter had an eight o’clock class and was late. 
As he started off, however, he took up a letter ad¬ 
dressed to him, from the table in the hall, and 
stopped in his tracks. He stared again at the 
superscription and the eight o’clock class dropped 
completely from his mind. The letter was in a 
hand that he knew well, and the sight of it in¬ 
stantly smote him with fear. He looked about to 
see if any one was watching and turned to flee to 
the bathroom upstairs, the only place in the house 
where privacy was possible. On second thought 
he walked quietly by the group on the porch and 
went up the street. A ten minute lope brought 
him to the deserted little nine-hole golf course 
outside of town. He could not help thinking how- 
benign, how untroubled the fields were in the 
brisk, delicious morning. They calmed his pound¬ 
ing blood and sent a wave of optimism through 
him. 

“What a fool I was to miss my class,” he mut- 


32 


BLINDFOLD 


tered aloud. “It may not be anything at all.” 
He sat down on a sandbox and hurriedly opened 
the letter. 

“Dear Potter,” it ran, “It’s happened as I was 
afraid. Dm nearly three months gone. Dr. 
Schottman won’t help me. He says he never does 
that. I haven’t got much money, and don’t know 
what I’m to do. 


“Yours truly, 


“Ellen.” 


IV 


The blow, which he had many times dreaded, 
but which for two long years he had thought of as 
blissfully escaped, had fallen. Until the summer 
just passed, that length of time had elapsed—the 
first two years of his University life—during 
which the affair with Ellen had reverted to its 
original innocence. Before that they had drifted 
on, taking what opportunities they could find. 
Potter, sometimes conscious that the thing was 
an ordinary slavery, had struggled against it from 
time to time, but half-heartedly. Habit and grati¬ 
fication were too strong. Then, in a blinding flash 
of awakened responsibility, he realized that 
physical consequences followed such relations, 
and under the guise of moral repentance, he went 
to her and told her he wished to end it. 

Ellen acquiesced simply enough in this, as she 
acquiesced, perforce, in everything that concerned 
her. She dumbly worshipped him, but she knew 
how much that mattered. 

Then had come the summer of this year. It was 
accident that threw them together one night, one 
very magical night, as Potter recalled. Both 
were lonely; the Meadowburn family were all 
away on an August journey. Their old intimacy, 

33 



34 


BLINDFOLD 


which in reality had been sordid and furtive, took 
on a certain beauty—the sentiment of past things. 
Under that momentary glamour forgetfulness 
took possession of them. 

“She said,” recalled Potter, “that was the first 
time she had been thoroughly happy and secure.” 

He ruminated on, connecting this sudden, vivid 
pleasure of hers, this mood of safety and surren¬ 
der, with the deadening outcome they now faced. 
His own fear had never left him since that night 
—that one night, for it had had no sequel. Now 
he interpreted the event fatalistically. Nature 
had waited for that happy mood of Ellen’s be¬ 
fore making her a mother. Nature was a subtle 
monster, a thing of scheming purposes. She let 
you go on and on with impunity and then tripped 
you when you weren’t thinking, when you felt par¬ 
ticularly strong because you had put up a long 
fight against her. She could even, in this awful 
moment, make him thrill with the knowledge of 
having created life. . . . 

Potter had never had a confidant in the affair 
with Ellen. So far as he knew the secret was her 
own and his, and had been from the beginning. 
And it was something of a miracle, considering 
their narrow escapes from detection. 

But now that he needed support there was no 
one to turn to. Roget was the last person in the 
world to whom he could take such a tale. He had 
an idea that Roget would laugh him to scorn or 


BLINDFOLD 


35 


question his taste in becoming the victim of such 
an intimacy. Roget had been raised among 
women and had acquired a knowledge of them 
that made his relations toward them seem little 
short of uncanny to Potter. He gave the impres¬ 
sion of being successful with many and quite un¬ 
involved with all. To Potter women were the 
paralyzing mystery. It was one of the subjects on 
which he and Roget did not meet. 

Had there been an older man in town with whom 
he had developed any sympathy, a faculty mem¬ 
ber or a person in authority of any kind, he would 
have gone to him. There were many questions; 
there was money to be got; there was common- 
sense guidance needed as to doctors and other 
such matters, instinctively repugnant and dread¬ 
ful to him. 

Marriage! Sometimes in the dead of night, 
lying awake with his fears, anticipating just this 
predicament, he had experienced exaltations, 
mystic desires for sacrifice and immolation and 
simple, laborious living; it was a surviving rem¬ 
nant of his intense religious life as a very young 
boy. In such moments his mind had admitted the 
idea of marriage. In broad day, the thought be¬ 
came abhorrent. And in all the broad days that 
had preceded this one, his fears also had melted 
with the sun; but now they would not melt. . . . 
He knew perfectly well that he would urge mar¬ 
riage upon Ellen, sincerely in a fashion. He knew 



BLINDFOLD 


36 

also that she would flatly refuse, and that he 
would accept her refusal with relief. 

Yet what was she to do! He counted on no 
sympathy from the prudish Meadowburns. They 
would loudly invoke the names of their young 
daughters and fly from the scene. The family 
physician, Schottman, a tolerant German-born 
physician of real ability, had taken an odd sort of 
liking to Ellen and never visited the house with¬ 
out having a talk with her wherever he happened 
to find her at work. He had been their hope in 
earlier discussions. With him, there would be no 
danger, while with others—Potter writhed before 
the spectres of horrible little operating rooms, of 
death in agony, of murder and police and squint- 
eyed judges with nose-glasses. But Ellen’s letter 
had settled Schottman. 

It was past noon before he realized it, and the 
golf links were becoming populated by a few 
straggling faculty men with clubs. He aimed for 
an outlying street which led into town and the act 
of motion toward a definite objective revived his 
spirits, which had been sinking hopelessly into the 
quicksand of despair. He went to the bank and 
drew out all of his small balance but a dollar. 
The previous day his check had come and he had 
paid his scot for October at the fraternity house. 
It was rare that his remittances from home ex¬ 
ceeded forty dollars a month. He converted the 
larger part of the sum he withdrew into a money 


BLINDFOLD 


37 


order at the Post Office and mailed it to Ellen, 
with a short note in which he told her he would 
see her somehow before long, and if possible to 
do nothing until then. 

“Money,” he thought, as he stepped out of the 
Post Office, “if one just had enough money one 
could fix up anything!”—an idea that had come 
to him before in many a tight place and morning 
after. He fell to day-dreaming about what he 
would do for Ellen if he had money, money in his 
hand, money in plenty. 

The mailing of the letter had brought a sudden 
release to his feelings. It would cheer her up to 
hear from him. 

In this state he responded more willingly to 
passing acquaintances, did not avoid the livery 
stable man and the candy man, and the dozen other 
town bodies who were always about. Catas¬ 
trophes, he reflected, had their good points. They 
furnished a reason for cutting classes and loafing 
on a beautiful Fall day. He was tempted for a 
moment to call on Roget, who lived, as no one but 
he would have lived, on the native side of Broad¬ 
way, a short distance off. But he decided against 
it. He would be pressed to talk about his trouble 
and that he had resolved not to do except in the 
worst extremity, and certainly not to Roget. 

The decision to avoid Emmet left him no al¬ 
ternative, and he drifted into Steve BalPs bar. 
Those dark, quiet, wet-smelling precincts were de- 


38 


BLINDFOLD 


serted at that hoar, so far as his familiars were 
concerned. He was glad they were. It would 
not have been easy to conceal the turmoil within 
him, if forced into an extended conversation. He 
would take a drink or two, slowly, he concluded, 
go home and try to forget the whole thing, and to¬ 
morrow with a hard head, he would work out a 
plan of action. 

Frank, the experienced bar man, wiped up the 
much scarred and initialled table of the private 
room, and hovered in the doorway with a friendly 
smile. 

“This is the sort of companionship a fellow 
needs in my fix,” thought Potter. “Nothing like 
it. A good barkeep.” 

Frank, however, soon proved too busy to talk, 
and Potter was left to his own thoughts. The ef¬ 
fect which liquor usually had on him was to pro¬ 
duce three distinct stages. It plunged him first 
into a dreamy and altogether pleasant condition, 
in which his lot appeared the rosiest in the world, 
and he radiated good will on all sides. This led 
to melancholy and a gradual feeling of boredom 
with everything, aggravated by a tendency to ana¬ 
lyze his wrongs and conduct long, unspoken con¬ 
versations about them with the persons presumed 
to be responsible for wronging him. Then fol¬ 
lowed a feverish desire for physical motion, and 
the making of quick decisions, obeyed on the in¬ 
stant, however ill-advised. 


BLINDFOLD 


39 


The first state of high spirits brought him agree¬ 
ably to six o’clock when he left Steve Ball’s for 
fear of encountering early drinkers from the 
Campus. He was hungry and bolted sandwiches 
and coffee in a nameless lunch-wagon around the 
corner. He found himself after that in the 
‘ 4 Bucket of Blood.” Night had fallen; the place 
was unspeakably sordid with its dim lamps and 
shuffling bums, and his problem once more assumed 
proportions that harried him. He began to assail 
Ellen for ever having permitted the intimacy to 
start. Then he quickly reacted from that attack. 
A profound, overwhelming wave of self-abase¬ 
ment engulfed him. If there was suffering to be 
done poor Ellen would endure all of it. She had 
been his victim and had given him what she had 
to give, in all things. Had their ages been pre¬ 
cisely reversed, he could not have been more re¬ 
sponsible. 

As he ordered another bottle of beer, he became 
acutely conscious that his money was disappear¬ 
ing. There was no more to be had, certainly for 
several days. Mails had to take their time, even if 
there was anything to hope for from them. This 
sense of impecuniousness made his mind veer to 
another complicated grievance. In one of the 
banks at home, held for his use at majority, lay 
what now seemed an incredible sum of money, 
from his grandmother’s estate. He had twice en¬ 
treated his father to allow him to draw modestly 


40 


BLINDFOLD 


on it. His father had not refused in either case, 
but had probed good-naturedly into his reasons 
for desiring it. But why, thought the boy, should 
his father have to know his private business ? How 
could his father understand his peculiar needs! 
These questions had rankled time and again. 

And now, he reflected bitterly, now that the 
trust fund might be the means of lightening a 
burden that would follow him all his life, it would 
be the same old story with his father. He would 
have to make a full confession of the case. But he 
could not do this. How could he tell his father 
such a yam? Weren’t his whole family concerned 
as much as he? Was there not a question of blood 
relationship involving them? Common delicacy 
and loyal feeling toward them demanded that he 
conceal the truth, unless he took the burden upon 
himself and parted with them completely. He 
had thought all this out before and settled it. 
There was nothing he could say to his father. 

These reflections, repeated over and over again, 
embroidered upon, attacked at every angle, 
adorned with many duplications of the same 
phrases, led nowhere. The bill at the “ Bucket of 
Blood” had to be paid, and nothing was left to do 
but to get up and go. Well, well, he felt like mov¬ 
ing anyhow. If only there were anything he could 
do now, right now, it would be a relief. He started 
walking rapidly uptown toward the fraternity 


BLINDFOLD 41 

house. Then at the corner where Broadway 
turned into his own street he stopped abruptly. 

“What a fool!” he muttered aloud. “What a 
triple-plated iron-headi Why did I send that 
money to Ellen? Why didn’t I go myself?” He 
stopped and began to curse his idiocy with all the 
eloquence and thoroughness of which he was capa¬ 
ble. 

Then he reflected, again aloud: “But is it too 
late? The jerk-water goes over to Jamestown in 
half an hour. I could make it to Jamestown. But 
I haven’t enough money to go all the way. Well, 
I’ve got enough to go to Jamestown.” 

The thought of bluffing his way on the through 
train with a promise to pay at the other end 
rushed into his mind. His name, his identification 
by letters in his pocket, his father’s acquaintance 
with railroad officials, these might carry him 
through. He turned and started toward the sta¬ 
tion. 

“If I can get home I can raise that money. I 
can raise it on a note. I can get some Jew like 
Stern to shave the note. Or maybe I can get it 
from Colonel Cobb. I’ll bet Colonel Cobb would 
let me have it.” 

This line of reasoning had to be exhausted with 
the usual number of variations and redundancies 
as he sat in the little branch train of two cars, 
with its dusty, worn plush seats, its threadbare 


42 


BLINDFOLD 


blue trainmen ambling back and forth, and its 
scattering of anonymous, unimportant-looking 
passengers. Fortunately nobody was leaving 
town that he knew. That was to be expected six 
weeks after the opening of term. For the first 
time, the thought struck him that he himself was 
bolting, perhaps for several days, without the for¬ 
mality of an excuse from the Dean, without even 
notifying the men at the house. Ordinarily this 
would have been a serious infraction of the rules, 
punishable by suspension. 

“I can’t help it,” he thought, “I’ve got to go. 
If they knew why I guess they’d think so.” 

This, however, upon reflection, sounded illogical 
and inadequate. The danger of trouble with the 
authorities would not down so easily. There’d 
be mystery in his disappearance, a search would 
be made for him in the morning, and a wire prob¬ 
ably sent to his folks. A moment later he had the 
solution. How easy! He could fix that up by tele¬ 
phoning the fraternity from Jamestown. It 
would cost him a quarter and he’d still have more 
than a dollar left. He would get old Ed Taylor to 
see the Dean to-morrow. Some lie would do. Ed 
could turn the Dean around his finger. Maybe 
he could keep the whole thing from his father. 
He could, if he slipped back to town on the next 
night’s train. If his father got hold of it, he’d 
be puzzled, want to know things, and this was no 
time to be submitted to questioning of any kind. 


BLINDFOLD 


43 


“At the same time,” he pursued, “I’d better 
not try the through train. Fellows have been 
pinched for it. They might take me off the train 
at Fayette, and then, oh, my God. ...” 

A picture rose before him of a night in the 
county jail, of wiring home for money to pay his 
fine, of his father coming to Fayette, of scandal 
untold and unending, and no help to Ellen what¬ 
ever. Rather the reverse, because he would be in 
disgrace and his hands, therefore, completely tied 
for some time to come. 

“No, I can’t try the through train. Too big a 
chance. I wonder how about the freight. Hell, 
plenty of other fellows have done that, with no 
worse results than a swipe on the ear or a bawling 
out. Besides I’ve got a little money. Brakies are 
all right.” 

The wind at that moment coming through the 
leaky train was devilishly sharp, and he had no 
overcoat, nothing but his fall-weight suit. It 
would be still colder later, especially on an un¬ 
protected freight car roof, which was the only 
place he could think of to ride. 

“Can’t help it,” he concluded. “It’s got to be 
the freight. I can get a half pint of rot gut at 
Jamestown. Keep me warm enough. It’s just a 
nice little ride in the open air.” 

An hour later, with his hat pulled down over his 
eyes, and his bottle in his breast pocket, Potter 
stepped from the smoke-draped, kerosene-smell- 


44 


BLINDFOLD 


ing barroom of the little junction town. By buying 
a round of beer for two loafers he had obtained 
the advice and information he wanted. The 
freight train now resting on tracks just back of 
those on which the through train was soon ex¬ 
pected would pull out for his destination about 
ten-thirty. He crept down perhaps a half a dozen 
cars from the station and found himself practi¬ 
cally in open country. An overgrown fence lay 
twenty feet to the side of one of the big, dirty- 
looking red cars. He sat down in the shadow of 
the fence to wait, listening to the frogs in the dim, 
unwelcoming marshes behind him. 

Once as he sat there a man ran along the top 
of the train from the caboose far off at the end of 
the line of cars and came back. Once just a little 
before the scheduled hour, he heard cinders being 
crunched under foot in the direction of the engine. 
The flashing rays of a lantern, swung from an in¬ 
visible shoulder, played under the cars and the 
figure carrying it passed by hurriedly on the other 
side. At every coupling the lantern was swung 
up between the cars. Osprey knew now why the 
roustabouts had told him to lie low and keep away 
from the train while it was still. 

“Wait ’til she gives her first jerk, then grab 
her and climb like yer momma was after you.” 

Whistles shrieked and soon a long, noisy shiver 
travelled down the length of the cars. Potter 
jumped for the iron treads closest to him. The 


BLINDFOLD 


45 


train was moving off and he with it. Once on top 
of the car, he laid full length, making himself as 
small as possible on the side of the roof farthest 
from the station, until it should be passed. Be¬ 
yond the little town he breathed freely, took a 
comfortable seat on the flat boardway in the 
centre with his legs dangling over the car’s end, 
and gripped the rusty steel shaft of the brake. 


ft 


\ 


V 


At first he did not mind the bumping, nor the 
penetrating wind, nor the coldness of the metal on 
his palms. The occasional showers of cinders 
were annoying, and this grew worse as the train 
increased its speed. Nevertheless, he was exhila¬ 
rated; the motionless friendly stars overhead, the 
sense of succeeding in a wild and unreasonable ad¬ 
venture gave him courage and high spirits. He 
only had to stand it for a few hours and a few 
hours of discomfort never had killed anybody. 

Misgivings crept over him gradually. His seat 
was being severely lambasted by the bumping. It 
seemed incredible, in a way, how it kept up and 
the violence of it. The steel bar to which he held 
grew increasingly cold, yet he realized that come 
what may he would have to cling to it or stand a 
chance of falling. The wind became more biting 
and between it and the bar his fingers were stiff¬ 
ening fast. The cinders, stinging his face with 
only brief cessations, might soon be unendurable. 

However, he argued, he could bear all these for 
some time, and when he couldn’t bear them any 
longer, he could do something else, shift his posi¬ 
tion. He deliberately decided to stand his pres¬ 
ent one as long as he could, then change and stand 

46 


BLINDFOLD 


47 


the next one as long as he could. In that way each 
new position would be so much the greater relief. 
He would see the night through. A long pull at 
the flask revived him. 

44 I’ll get my second wind pretty soon,” he 
thought, “and it won’t be so bad. That flask was 
an inspiration.” 

The night wore on and Potter resorted to first 
one expedient and then another. He put his right 
side to the wind and then his left, thus partly pro¬ 
tecting his face from the cinders. He wrapped 
handkerchiefs—fortunately he had two—around 
his hands. It was no good trying to get a decent 
hold of his board seat. He didn’t feel secure that 
way. These make-shifts did not help his sore 
buttocks, which were being hammered to insensi¬ 
bility, nor keep off the cold which was creeping 
over his whole body, but they lessened the num¬ 
ber of his pains. 

Finally he could endure sitting no longer. He 
laid down first on one side, then on the other, on 
his belly, and even for a while on his back. He 
threw his arms around the brake shaft and dou¬ 
bled his body into a bouncing, shaken ball, in or¬ 
der to keep the cold out of his vitals. At the 
moment when he thought he was beginning to see 
the end of his endurance the train ambled benevo¬ 
lently to a stop. He breathed a sigh of thanks 
and drank. 

They were on a siding. As the train continued 


48 


BLINDFOLD 


still, for five minutes, for ten minutes, a fresh fear 
assailed him. He had forgotten about the train 
crew. The fellow at Jamestown had told him to 
get otf and hide whenever the train stopped. 

“You got to do that if yer ridin’ in sight,’’ he 
said. Indeed, had the man been a professional 
tramp instead of a village lounger, he would have 
scouted the whole idea of riding on top. 

But by this time Potter was so stiff and sore in 
every muscle that he feared being unable to climb 
back while the train was in motion. The relief 
from the rushing wind and bumping and cinders 
was too much. It was too sweet to sit there and 
recover some use of his limbs, to feel the warm 
blood in him once more for a brief spell. If he 
could only smoke or get up and walk about—but 
that would be dangerously courting attention. 
He had gone this far, and he would finish it; 
there was no sense in taking more chances than 
were necessary. 

It was unearthly still. Not a living thing 
seemed to stir for miles about, over the un¬ 
interrupted fields of stubble just visible in the 
starlight. Even the frogs were silent. Against 
the sky far off he saw the silhouette of a group 
of buildings and trees, but they seemed like ap¬ 
paritions in a dream. On the train he was in a 
separate world, cut off from the other, a lonely 
world consisting of himself and his thoughts. 
The long, tapering string of dark cars ahead 


BLINDFOLD 


49 


struck him like a procession of elephants asleep. 
They were impersonal and cruel, but alive; and 
presently would begin to sway and lumber fright¬ 
fully through the murk. With their stopping his 
life, it seemed, had stopped. 

Time went on. They had been there on the 
siding for fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes. Sud¬ 
denly he was conscious of a low, blurred humming 
which rose from the main tracks alongside, and a 
succession of whistle blasts at a great distance 
broke the monotony. The buzz of the rails grew 
louder and the whistles shrieked again. His tus¬ 
sle with discomfort was about to begin once more, 
but he felt infinitely rested and refreshed. He sat 
up straight and peered down the tracks for the 
sight of a headlight. 

“Hullo!” 

The head and shoulders of a man appeared 
over the top of the car, followed by a short, wiry 
body. 

“What the hell’s this? How’d you get here?” 

“I’ve got to get to Mississippi City, to-night. 
I’m from the University up at Athens.” 

“Don’t care where yer from. This here ain’t 
no place fer you.” 

“Say, old man, you’re not goin’ to put me off 
now, are you ? ’ ’ 

“H’m.” The man leaned over and inspected 
him familiarly. 

“Yeh, you don’t look much like a bum. Uni- 


50 


BLINDFOLD 


versity up at Athens, eh? IVe heard some about 
you God damn loafers, raisin’ hell on trains. 
Why the Christ can’t you ride in the cars where 
you belong?” 

4 ‘Didn’t have the price.” 

“No. An’ you think this railroad’s a charity in- 
stitootion?” 

“Say,” pleaded Potter, “honest, this is a life 
and death matter. It’d be a dirty trick to put a 
fellow off. Le’ me go the rest of the way, go on.” 

The brakeman was obviously relenting. He 
gazed at Potter’s huddled, unhappy looking figure 
while the passenger train, like a streak of explod¬ 
ing lights on a whirling black band, shot deafen- 
ingly by. 

“How far are we, anyway?” asked Potter. 
“Must be more than half way.” 

The brakeman chuckled. 

“We ain’t even a third of the way yet. Guess 
you’ve been plenty cold up here.” 

The first sentence fell heavily upon Potter’s 
spirits. 

“Gee, seems longer’n that,” he said, as casually 
as he could manage. 

“Got on at Jamestown, did you?” 

“Yes.” 

“You got any money?” 

“A little,” said Potter eagerly. “I’ll give you 
all I’ve got.” 


BLINDFOLD 51 

He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew it 
forth with a collection of small change. 

“There,’’ he said, counting it over. “It’s 
seventy-five cents.’ ’ 

The brakeman took it. 

“That all you got, honest to God?” 

“Every cent. I can get more at Mississippi 
City, though. You going to be there a few 
hours?” 

“Huh,” replied the other, “guess you’ll need 
breakfast by the time you get in. Ain’t much used 
to this kind o’ business, eh? Well, here’s cotfee 
money.” He handed back a dime. 

“Have a drink, old man?” asked Potter, almost 
jovially, pulling out his bottle with a distinct feel¬ 
ing of pride. 

“Sure.” 

The man took a long pull at the depleted flask 
and returned it almost empty. 

“Ach,” he grunted appreciatively. “That’s 
red eye! Bet you were drunk, boy, an’ thought 
ridin’ free was a picnic. Well, better come out o’ 
this and hustle up the track. They’s an empty 
box car about half way up. You’ll see it ’cause 
one door’s open. An’ you’re God damn lucky, 
son. You’d just naturally a froze a lung off up 
here an’ maybe fell off an’ got winged. Shake a 
leg. Just time to make it. An’ hop off well out¬ 
side the yards when we get to town in the 


52 BLINDFOLD 

mornin’. Understand! If you don’t you may see 
the judge.’’ 

Before he had finished speaking Potter was 
stumbling frantically along the cinder track-side. 
In one end of the empty car was a little dirty straw 
and excelsior. Two minutes later he was asleep, 
jolting happily along the streets of paradise in a 
royal coach. An old man in a brakeman’s cap 
whom he took to be the king of the country sat be¬ 
side him. . . . 

A sudden, wrenching jolt and the screaming of 
brakes woke him. Daylight filled the car, and in 
a moment he was. out on his feet, recognizing the 
familiar outskirts of his native city. He plunged 
into the park, striding vigorously along over new- 
fallen crisp leaves, warming his body, which had 
been chilled through during his sleep, even in that 
protected corner. The woods were gay with the 
last of the autumn colour; the morning was dewy 
and mysterious under long corridors of trees. 
His day’s job seemed easy before him, such as it 
was, and beyond that he was too happy and thank¬ 
ful to speculate. Quite a trip, he thought, thor¬ 
oughly surprised that he had attempted it and 
come through all right. 

“If I hadn’t got potty, I wouldn’t be here,” he 
told himself, justifying thereby volumes of alco¬ 
holic adventures past and to come. 

He looked down at his hands, his trousers, his 
shirt. He was filthy. It would never do to appear 


BLINDFOLD 


53 


before Colonel Cobb with the grime of a hundred 
and forty miles of rough travel clinging to him. 
But this was the home town, good old home town! 
and he could get breakfast, new linen and a good 
wash without the outlay of a cent. He took the 
car downtown and went first to a store, then to a 
hotel. By ten o ’clock he was breakfasting sumptu¬ 
ously and appeared fairly respectable. 

Heretofore, Colonel Cobb had seemed in Pot¬ 
ter’s mind a sort of complete symbol of good fel¬ 
lowship. The all-weather friend of his father for 
thirty years, Potter had heard everything there 
was to know about him that could with discretion 
be told. He was the old-fashioned type of public¬ 
ity man, doing business largely through the me¬ 
dium of champagne and dinners. Open-handed¬ 
ness and good nature were traits which a half 
century of tradition had associated with his name. 

A much older man than Potter’s father, Cobb 
wore a beard which was nearly white, but he was 
one of those veterans to whom a beard imparted 
an air of boldness and adventure rather than of 
piety or age. His costume was youngish, smart¬ 
looking, but deeply wrinkled by lounging ease. 
He greeted the young man cordially in his some¬ 
what unpretentious and disorderly office and in¬ 
dicated an upholstered arm chair to him. Potter 
sank into it and the old man leaned back in his 
own to survey him. 

“Well,” he said, “Johnny’s boys are growing 


54 


BLINDFOLD 


up. Let’s see, are you the second or the third?” 

“Third, Colonel.” 

“I know your brother Kirk better’n I do the 
rest of you. I see a good deal of him up at the 
Mercantile Club. Kirk’s a good boy and looks to 
me like he’s goin’ to make his Dad proud. You 
ain’t old enough to drink whiskey, are you? I 
guess not this time of the morning, anyway. Well, 
have a cigar. ’ ’ 

He thrust out a spacious box. 

44 Colonel,” said Potter, 44 you may be surprised 
at what I’m here for. I’m in a kind of a fix, a bad 
fix, to tell the truth, and I need money. I’ve got 
twenty-eight hundred in the National Trust but I 
can’t draw on it for two years, without my father’s 
consent. I want to get two hundred and fifty dol¬ 
lars on a note for that length of time.” 

As he mentioned the amount it seemed so enor¬ 
mous to Potter that he felt a little absurd. He 
had never handled more than fifty dollars at a 
time in his life. 

44 I see. H’m.” 

The older man was smoking a well-used meer¬ 
schaum and took a few puffs on it in silence, look¬ 
ing at Potter quickly once or twice with a more 
penetrating and appraising glance than at first. 
The latter noticed, in spite of the Colonel’s genial 
expression, that his eyes, in reflection, became a 
very cold and impersonal grey. 

4 4 H’m, that’s bad, ’ ’ said the Colonel. 4 4 You see, 


BLINDFOLD 


55 


your pa and me are old pals. Now, why don’t you 
go over and tell him what the trouble is? There’s 
nothin’ in the world you could tell John Osprey 
that he wouldn’t understand. There ain’t a thing, 
son. ’ ’ 

“I think there is, Colonel,” said Potter gravely. 

“Some girl trouble?” 

“Yes.” 

“Now, I’d say you’re wrong. I’d say he’d be 
just the kind of man to take that kind of a story 
to. Your old man has got* nothing to learn about 
human nature, son. ’ ’ 

Potter felt the moment had come for fuller con¬ 
fidence if he hoped to succeed. He had anticipated 
this objection and intended to combat it by lay¬ 
ing stress on his own reasons for not wishing to 
tell his father. These he felt would make a good 
impression upon any man. He launched into the 
broad outlines of his story. Colonel Cobb lis¬ 
tened with seriousness and attention until he had 
finished. When Potter mentioned the manner in 
which he had come to town that morning his eye 
lighted up with a spark of the warmth that had 
marked his first reception. 

“H’m,” he chuckled. “I like that. Yep, I 
used to hop those blamed things myself. Then 
they got me to workin’ for ’em, and since then 
I’ve had to ride in style—but I don’t enjoy it as 
much. ’ ’ 

He ruminated on in silence, puffing at the pipe 



56 


BLINDFOLD 


held in one hand and combing his beard downward 
with the other, at every stroke or so stopping to 
scratch the tip of his thrust out chin, and drawing 
down his lower lip somewhat in the manner of a 
bitted horse. Potter noticed the long, blackened 
roots of his teeth, his puffy, reddish skin, and the 
tiny network of blood vessels and wrinkles that 
crisscrossed his cheeks around the eyes and nose. 
He felt a sudden disgust for life, for the rotten 
universe and for his own silly predicament. He 
grew restless, wishing for a decision one way or 
the other, scarcely caring which it should be. 

“You’re at college, you said?” asked the 
Colonel. 

“Yes, State University. Two years.’’ 

“How are you doin’ up there in your studies?” 

“Well, a little better than the average, Colonel, 
right along,” said Potter, smiling. It was some¬ 
what less than the truth, yet he regretted the 
words immediately, as a boast. But the Colonel 
did not mind. 

“That’s good,” he said, heartily. 

He lurched forward in his big leather swivel 
chair and laid down his pipe. 

“The way I figure it out is this,” he said. “If 
you know that there’s two of us to get into trouble 
over this money, instead of one, you maybe will 
be more careful not to do the wrong thing with it, 
so it will get out. As for what’s the wrong thing 
I leave that to you. I’m goin’ to take a chance on 


BLINDFOLD 


57 

John Osprey’s skinnin’ me alive if he hears about 
this transaction, and I guess there ain’t much like¬ 
lihood of his hearin’ about it from you or me, is 
there!” 

He ponderously drew out a long black check¬ 
book, inked the pen and looked at it, inked it again 
and wrote. Potter received the slip of paper with 
its figures written in a big, round buccaneer’s 
Spencerian. His fingers trembled in spite of him¬ 
self. 

“But, Colonel,” he began, suddenly feeling a 
sense of guilt. 

“I don’t want a note,” interrupted Cobb, lift¬ 
ing his rotund body by the arms of Iris chair. 
“The check’s enough. If you don’t pay me, I’ll 
send it around to you some day, when you’re rich, 
and you can light your cigar with it or pay, just 
the way you please. It’s made out to cash, so’s 
you won’t have any trouble gettin’ the money, but 
you just write your name along the back when you 
get to the bank. Good luck, son.” 

With the money actually in his pocket, Potter’s 
despondency abruptly returned. After all, what 
had he accomplished! The money was useless so 
far as restoring Ellen to her normal self was con¬ 
cerned. Much more—a simply unrealizable sum 
—would be needed to enable her to go away in 
peace and have her child with dignity and com¬ 
fort. At best, this would only pay the price of a 
crime. . . . 


58 


BLINDFOLD 


He found her in much the same mood as his own, 
tired and resigned. She did not complain or ac¬ 
cuse any one at all. But she seemed aching with 
dull resentment at the inevitable, friendless fu¬ 
ture, hating it and fearing it. She told him di¬ 
rectly that she was not to have an operation. Dr. 
Schottman had warned that in her case it meant 
an exceptional risk. Her health was not good and 
having the baby would put her in fine shape. . . . 
Potter felt the sting of a lash in every word she 
uttered. He burst out at last. 

‘ 4 Ellen, you must marry me. You must. 
There’s no other way out.” 

She did not laugh at him, but she simply re¬ 
fused to heed him. If she had consented he would 
have felt in that moment infinitely happier; and 
for even a ray of light in his present darkness, 
he would have abandoned a great many of the fu¬ 
ture’s promises. 

“But what will you do?” 

“Dr. Schottman has arranged everything for 
me. He’s to take me to a hospital in a few weeks. 
I could wait a month or two longer, I suppose, 
without their knowing it, but I might as well go. 
At the hospital I’ll have to work, until my time. 
Then he’s fixed it with some people for me to stay. 
They won’t mind anything. He’s told them all 
about me. They’re patients of his, nice people 
and well off. The Meadowburns will never know 
anything, they’ll never see me again. Not even 


BLINDFOLD 


59 


the doctor knows about you and nobody will if 
you keep still. I'm just to walk out and disap¬ 
pear.'' 

Potter stumbled down tbe stairway of the pre¬ 
tentious new Meadowbum house in a daze of mis¬ 
ery and meanness. Nightfall found him lying face 
downward in the dried leaves of the park where 
the woods were thickest. He might have built his 
house there and never have been discovered for a 
generation. He might have become like “Clothes- 
pole Tom," a hermit hero of his childhood, and 
sold gopher skins for a living. Some such method 
of losing himself would have been sweet. . . . 

But youth walks forward even though it har¬ 
bours corroding secrets. He could not escape the 
vision of Ellen in a hospital uniform, worn and 
broken-spirited, carrying heavy buckets of dirty 
water and swabbing down floors with a mop. He 
went back to college, lifeless and desperate, whip¬ 
ping himself into work with torturing thoughts. 
By January even his family saw something was 
wrong, and his father, who saw farthest, told him 
to make his own plans, to leave school and go 
where he liked. After a week of dismal idleness 
at home there followed a telegraphic correspon¬ 
dence with Roget. The two started off together 
to New York. Three years later, crossing the At¬ 
lantic to Paris, Osprey still had not returned to 
his native city, and he repeated his oath never to 
go back there again if it could be avoided. 


VI 


What Ellen Sydney had expected to be her trial 
by fire proved quite the opposite. It was the be¬ 
ginning of a new and kinder life. For if she had 
been unhappy at the Meadowburns ’ it was because 
of a deep-seated difference between her own na¬ 
tive impulses and those of her keepers. Long 
habit in a narrow rut, listening daily to a cautious 
and inglorious philosophy, had fostered in her 
the belief that the great world outside was mon¬ 
strous and cruel; but she did not find it so. On 
the contrary, there were many to appreciate her 
cheerful courage and ready laugh, and return it 
with affection. Life at the hospital was novel and 
filled with congenial activity. Behind its unmoral 
walls was an anonymous and practical community 
in which her shame quickly melted from her daily 
thoughts. After the first few days of strangeness 
and mutual curiosity she saw that none cared how 
she had come by her situation. Nor were her du¬ 
ties burdensome; without the normal occupation 
they gave her she would have been ill at ease. 

The picture of a drab and bitter Ellen, clatter¬ 
ing about a sordid environment with pail and mop 
—which gave Potter so many secret twinges in 

his New York room—never came true. 

60 


BLINDFOLD 


61 


She interested herself in the patients, most of 
whom she discovered to her surprise were even 
less able to cope with misfortune than she; the 
small purse which Dr. Schottman allowed her from 
the funds Potter had given her was always half 
open. The many varieties of mothers, and the in¬ 
numerable enchanting babies fascinated her; but 
no more so than the coming of her own. As the 
weeks went by her condition, the manifestations 
of life within her, gave her increasing importance. 
It made her for the first time interesting to her¬ 
self. She thought that she grew more attractive. 
Her body, long attenuated, took on softer contours 
under the wholesome diet and freedom from re¬ 
sponsibility; her breasts were her particular 
pride. They changed magically; from stubby pro¬ 
trusions without any character at all, they grew 
round and firm as they had not been since girl¬ 
hood. 

Then there were the visits of Dr. Schottman. 
His humorous sallies dispelled in a moment the few 
worries that came with the long days of waiting. 
He brought scant news of the Meadowburns, not 
seeming to care to talk of them. They had been 
very eager to find her at first, had made a great 
stir and called upon the police. Then, as suddenly 
as they took up the search, they had dropped it. 

“Ah, they didn’t care much, you may be sure,” 
laughed Ellen. It was far from displeasing to her 
to know that she need not depend upon them. But 


62 


BLINDFOLD 


immediately she remembered that it was the doc¬ 
tor to whom she owed her present good fortune, 
not herself; and she felt remorseful. 

To Schottman, the hospital seemed to be some¬ 
thing of a continuous comedy, and all these 
mothers, many of them abandoned, caught unwill¬ 
ingly in the grip of natural force, were the vic¬ 
tims of a mild practical joke. How much of this 
was a pose which he found useful in dealing with 
them, and how much of it a mask to hide a disil¬ 
lusioning experience nobody knew, but it never 
gave offence. His homely grin and bracing philos¬ 
ophy made him a favourite everywhere. 

When she held her child in her arms for the 
first time a momentary grief oppressed her that 
it should be fatherless. But the child grew far 
more pleasing to look at than she had hoped it 
would be. Its dark hair and unexpected blue eyes 
made it look unlike either herself or Potter at 
first. Then a vague resemblance asserted itself, 
and more strongly on the mother’s side. This 
seemed right to Ellen. The less her daughter re¬ 
sembled the father she was never to see, the bet¬ 
ter. 

Before long she was allowed to take it out in the 
perambulator Schottman had bought for her. The 
hospital was located in a bleak, northern section 
of town, a region long associated in Ellen’s mind 
with the foreign population, principally German, 
and much sniffed at by people of the West End 


BLINDFOLD 


63 


where she had lived. She remembered how de¬ 
pressing that day had been when they first drove to 
the hospital, through wintry streets between end¬ 
less rows of low-roofed, packed-in brick houses and 
frame cottages. They had a humbler and more 
domestic air than she was used to, and gave forth 
odors of strong cookery, stale lager and of musty 
parlours seldom opened to the air. But the four 
months of hospital life in their midst had accus¬ 
tomed her to these exotic touches, and when the 
people began to overflow into the streets at the 
first hint of warm weather and to take a kindly 
interest in her child, she felt drawn to them. It 
amused her to have them think, as they sometimes 
did, that she was the nurse or governess. 

It was a mistake, perhaps natural, that Dr, 
Schottman at least viewed with satisfaction. The 
little girl’s charm would serve his purpose with 
the Blaydons to whom he was taking them. He 
had never entertained any doubt that Ellen 
would win them in her own way. Her willingness 
and modesty, a form of rough good breeding, 
would recommend her well. But if the child 
should be really attractive, so much the better 
for everybody. 

“Come now,” he teased Ellen, “this little chick 
has a high tone about her. What you think I Bet¬ 
ter let me hunt up the young scapegrace and show 
him what a handsome little rascal he’s responsible 
for.” 


64 


BLINDFOLD 


*‘How do you know lie’s young?” laughed Ellen. 
He had never pressed the question of fatherhood, 
and she was not afraid that he would ever try to. 

“And what will you name it? For it’s mother, 
eh?” 

Ellen had settled that matter. She had decided 
long before on the name of Moira, for Moira Mc¬ 
Coy, the pretty, laughing, assistant head nurse, 
who had been the first to befriend her. But con¬ 
cerning this she also chose to keep her counsel for 
the present. Another thing troubled her mightily. 

“Are these—these people I’m going to live with 
Episcopalians ? ’ ’ 

He laughed. 

“I believe there’s a division in the family. Ach, 
these Christian distinctions! They split God up 
into small pieces like a pie, and each one takes a 
different slice. They are afraid to get indigestion 
from too much goodness, eh? But ‘Aunt Ma¬ 
thilda’—that is the sister-in-law—is Episcopalian. 
High church they call it. Oh, very high! It will 
suit you that way, I guess. And she is the boss. 
You’ll find that out.” 

High church. That would do very well. It was 
the serious question of her daughter’s christen¬ 
ing that disturbed her. 

The day came at last to take their fearsome 
step into a new home. Ellen wept a little over her 
farewells, but on such a lovely morning she could 
not be sad very long. She felt so good, so well, 



BLINDFOLD 


65 


and in the new clothes she had bought for this 
event she radiated unaccustomed health. 

“Look at you,” said the doctor. “I told you it 
would be good medicine. If your old friends 
could see you they wouldn’t know it was the same 
Ellen .’ 9 

She blushed. She had never expected to leave 
the hospital so merry. In a few moments they 
were driving along in a new-fangled thing called 
a taxicab, and she had to hold the baby carefully 
to keep it from bumping. It was the first time she 
had ever ridden in an automobile, but her thoughts 
were too far ahead to concern themselves with the 
novelty. A year ago it would have been a great 
adventure. 

First of all she reflected: 

“When Moira is grown up she will love me, 
and we will do so many nice things together.” 
Then she thought, “Who knows, Moira may have 
a father some day, and never be the wiser.” 

The doctor had decided that she was to be 
known as Mrs. Williams at the Blaydons’. “Aunt 
Mathilda” herself had suggested this, and Ellen 
was willing enough to consent. But she accepted 
with greater reluctance his proposal of a gold 
band for her finger. The idea smacked of a de¬ 
ception that was too bold by far, a deception that 
involved higher powers than those of earthly au¬ 
thority, in her mind. She felt almost a criminal 
whenever she looked at it. 


66 


BLINDFOLD 


The rattling vehicle swung through an impres¬ 
sive high gate and they were looking down be¬ 
tween a row of trees. To their left, running 
straight through the middle of the thoroughfare 
lay a grass grown parkway so dotted with shrubs 
that she got only fleeting glimpses of the houses 
on the other side. Those on her own side she 
gazed at with wonder. They were set far apart, 
with generous lawns, and the suggestion of gar¬ 
dens farther back behind walls and iron grill 
work. The big houses revealed their age, not only 
by their old-fashioned and heterogeneous archi¬ 
tecture, but by the smoke-grimed look of their 
brick and stone. 

* ‘ How lovely and peaceful, ’’ thought Ellen, fas¬ 
cinated at the fresh sight of green everywhere 
spotted and patched with sunlight. She seemed 
to have been wearing dark glasses for months and 
months. . . . She noticed that the driver was 
slowing down his vehicle and was craning his neck 
for the house numbers. 

“My land,” she murmured, “we’re going to 
live here. . . . Look, Moira, look!” she could not 
help but cry aloud—and then flushed pink when 
she saw the doctor had heard the name. 

This was Trezevant Place, its fame already be¬ 
ginning to dwindle, so that Ellen, acquainted only 
with the new city, had heard of it but once or 
twice. For two generations the patrician families 
had housed there, and a few of the original own- 


BLINDFOLD 


67 


ers had remained, standing on their dignity, defy¬ 
ing the relentless town, which had long sprawled 
up to it, and around it and far beyond, unsightly, 
clamorous and vulgar. The snob that is in every¬ 
body claimed Ellen at that moment and she longed 
for an audience of Meadowbums and Potters to 
watch them disembark. 

The cab came to an abrupt stop before the 
bronze figure of a barefooted negro boy holding 
out an iron ring in one chubby paw. Ellen faced 
a front door of many bevelled panes of glass 
which reflected the bright sky into her eyes. Her 
knees failed her, but with a free hand she grasped 
the doctor’s sleeve, finding in the act reassurance 
enough to mount the steps between the red stone 
pillars. A maid appeared in the doorway. 

“Oh, it’s you, doctor,” she said, beaming at 
them from under her neat white cap. “Mrs. Sey¬ 
mour is waiting in the library. Go right in, 
please.” 

Ellen found herself in a room filled with book¬ 
shelves, and mahogany, and leather-covered 
chairs, facing a small lady who did not leave her 
straight, uncomfortable seat. The greying hair 
was done up in a knot on the top of her head and 
behind it was a dark spreading comb. She wore 
a light blue silk frock with a white collar of lace 
that folded back over her shoulders and left her 
neck bare. It was old-fashioned looking, Ellen 
thought, yet “nice” as she would have put it, 


68 


BLINDFOLD 


meaning smart, and she noticed that the woman’s 
throat was smooth and plump. Her graceful 
ankles showed, crossed, above a pair of little grey 
slippers with very high heels. What a little doll 
of a person! she thought. 

“Good morning, doctor,” said the lady, shaking 
hands with Schottman, while Ellen stood in the 
door. Then she turned to her. 

“Sit down, Mrs. Williams. You mustn’t feel 
strange here, because I am sure we are going to 
like each other. The doctor has told me nice 
things about you.” 

Ellen thought no more of dolls. The assured 
voice, and what she could only describe as the 
foreign way “Aunt Mathilda” pronounced her 
words, awed her. She did not know that this was 
what people called cultivated. She obeyed the in¬ 
junction to sit down, her eyes glued trustfully but 
timidly upon her new mistress. 

“I’m not going to keep you long this morning, 
because for the next day or two you will have lit¬ 
tle to do and will be getting accustomed to the 
place. You can take care of the child yourself?” 

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Ellen, and smiled. 
“I’ve taken care of many more than this one, and 
done the work besides.” 

“I see. That’s splendid. Well, you will have 
plenty of time for her. It can be managed very 
well. Gina is fond of children and will look after 
the baby when you are busy, and then there is my 


BLINDFOLD 


69 


nephews’ nurse, Mrs. Stone. Gina is my personal 
maid. The other servants are Marie, who is the 
parlour maid and waitress, John, the gardener 
and stableman, and the laundress Annie, who 
lives out. So the work is pretty well divided. 
And then there is Miss Wells, the trained nurse 
for Mrs. Blaydon. The doctor may have told you 
that Mrs. Blaydon never leaves her room.” 

Ellen lost track of this catalogue of servants, 
yet she felt a happy sense of importance in listen¬ 
ing to these matter-of-fact and self-respecting de¬ 
tails. It was as though she were being taken into 
the confidence of the household. She tried to at¬ 
tend Mrs. Seymour’s every word with serious¬ 
ness, and felt her embarrassment dropping away 
from her. 

“Dr. Schottman tells me that you have been the 
only help in the family. I suppose you have done 
only plain cooking!” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Well, you will have no trouble learning our 
likes and dislikes, and the way things must be 
served. Miss Wells will prepare most of Mrs. 
Blaydon’s meals, which are separate. The pres¬ 
ent cook is to stay until the end of the month, and 
that will give you plenty of time to catch on. And 
you mustn’t be afraid. We expect to make allow¬ 
ances. Of course, your wages will begin at once, 
but I can’t tell just what they should be until we 
try you, so we won’t discuss that to-day.” 


70 


BLINDFOLD 


“Oh, not at all, ma’am—” began Ellen, and 
stopped suddenly. “Aunt Mathilda” covered her 
embarrassment by rising, and Ellen stood also, 
with her child in her arms. The act brought 
them close enough together for Mrs. Seymour to 
see the baby’s face. 

“What a sweet little thing,” she said, and 
smiled cordially at Ellen. “I hope you are going 
to be happy here, Mrs. Williams. Marie will 
show you your room and give you everything 
you need. Don’t bother about your bags. John 
can take them up at once.” 

“Oh, thank you,” said Ellen. She stood hesi¬ 
tating, after saying a halting, awkward good-bye 
to the doctor. It was not easy to leave his 
friendly presence and impossible to thank him 
as she wanted to. But she turned and in the wake 
of Marie climbed the broad front steps. 

Their carved, heavy banisters and the thick rugs 
rebuked her. It was as though she realized that 
in this well-ordered house it would be rarely in¬ 
deed that she would tread them. Here she was 
more definitely placed than she would ever have 
been at the Meadowburns’. 

As they passed the second story landing two 
very small, cleanly dressed boys came out of a big 
bedroom, with a matronly hospital nurse between 
them. 


Ellen spent tier days learning more about the 
quaint art of cookery than she ever dreamed there 
was to know, and discovering the ways of rich 
people which were strange indeed. 

One of the first things that impressed her was 
the unvarying quiet. Never was a voice raised 
that could be heard beyond the room in which it 
was spoken, and this applied even to the young 
masters, who, if they ever made a regular boy- 
racket, must have done so behind the closed doors 
of the nursery. Compared to the shouting up 
and down stairs, the banging of pianos and doors, 
the general uproar of the Meadowburn household, 
this was like living in a church. The stately high 
ceilings and big stained glass windows intensified 
the illusion. 

And the armies of tradesmen who came! She 
had been accustomed to dealing with one butcher, 
one grocer, one baker. Here there were dozens 
who handled a farrago of specialties. There 
were three or four different dessert-makers, a 
pork butcher, a beef butcher, a poultry butcher, 
and a fish monger of high degree; there were a 
plain grocer, a grocer-importer, a wine-dealer, a 
liquor agent, coffee merchants and tea merchants, 


BLINDFOLD 


72 

purveyors of spices and sweet-meats, apothecaries 
and fruiterers, dealers in milk, eggs and butter, 
and a score of others whose business did not hap¬ 
pen to be with Ellen. All day they came and went. 
She had thought that supplying a kitchen was a 
matter of taking in a certain fixed number of 
staples and making the most of them. But here 
she found herself in the midst of an immense va¬ 
riety of esoteric materials whose names suggested 
the index of a geography. The kitchen with its 
vast conveniences for housing all these things in 
their appointed places was not unlike a large 
shop itself. 

Formal dinner parties there were, but they were 
rare during those days, because of the sick woman 
in the house. And it was well they were! thought 
she, judging by the lavishness of those she helped 
to prepare. Mrs. Seymour, however, gave many 
luncheons to her friends, and for these Ellen de¬ 
lighted to outdo herself, since Aunt Mathilda was 
not ungenerous with compliments when they were 
deserved. 

These refinements of luxury affected her un¬ 
consciously. She was soon trying to acquire the 
atmosphere of the house, to train her manners 
after her mistress, to soften her voice and even 
to alter the accent of her speech, which had al¬ 
ways, though she knew it not, been more agreeable 
than the average. 

This instinct of imitation led her to listen, when- 



BLINDFOLD 


73 


ever she could, to the conversations of Blaydon 
and his sister. She understood very little of what 
they said that did not concern the surface news 
of the family. Often they talked of books, and 
books were a strange world to Ellen. But one 
day the thought struck her that Moira, living her 
childhood in such a house would certainly acquire 
some of its cultivation, even though no one de¬ 
liberately undertook to teach her. 

But would Moira’s mother be worthy of such a 
companion? Ought she not to make an effort 
to improve her mind, so that Moira would be 
a little less ashamed of her in that rosy time 
ahead when they would understand each other? 
To Ellen the difficulties of reading were al¬ 
most insurmountable. Nothing terrified her so 
much as twenty pages of print. However, once 
the thought of her unworthiness in Moira’s eyes 
occurred to her, she did not hesitate a moment. 
From one of the upstairs book-cases she selected 
the largest volume she could find. It proved to be 
“Les Miserables,” and there was something she 
liked about the title. That night she began bravely 
to read. 

Hard as it was to make headway in it, she had 
chosen the only amusement possible to her. When 
she was not busy in the kitchen, mastering the 
problems of the stove and the mixing bowl, she sat 
beside her daughter. There was no chance to 
think of more exciting pleasures, for which, often 


74 


BLINDFOLD 


enough, the youth in her still yearned. Yet these 
duties were only confining, never exhausting. 
From the sheer drudgery of hard manual labour, 
to which she once thought herself condemned until 
she dropped, a miracle had suddenly delivered 
her. And that miracle was a little child, unlaw-, 
fully bom. Life held many mysteries for Ellen, 
but none of them was as incomprehensible as 
this. 

The first inkling that they were ever likely to 
move from the Trezevant place came to her 
through one of those overheard talks between 
Sterling Blaydon and his sister. They were sit¬ 
ting one morning in the brick-walled garden just 
off the rear drawing room, a lovely place, as Ellen 
knew, to dream and idle in, if it was deserted and 
she could have Moira tumbling about on the rugs 
at her feet. There were rows of green boxed 
plants along the top of the high walls, a striped 
awning and the clear sky spread between, like an¬ 
other mysterious ceiling farther away. There was 
comfort and security and the sense of distance too. 
It was like many other of the civilized refinements 
which Ellen discovered at the Blaydons’, sugges¬ 
tive of an almost incredible degree of foresight, 
of attention to the details of luxury, which the 
fortunate of the world had been developing il- 
limitably since the first man was carried on the 
backs of other men. Mr. Blaydon and his sister 
often breakfasted in this inner garden on fine 



BLINDFOLD 75 

mornings, and Ellen sometimes served them her¬ 
self in the absence of Marie. 

She believed Sterling Blaydon the most roman¬ 
tic personage she had ever seen. His hair was 
almost white, hut he was young in body and in 
years. His lean, brown face, which she thought 
had a tired expression when in repose or when he 
was reading, lighted up marvellously when he 
smiled. His tall, solid form would have made two 
of Aunt Mathilda’s. Ellen loved to peep through 
the butler’s pantry doors and see him decant the 
special brandy for his friends after dinner, lan¬ 
guid and big-handed and jovial through the smoky 
fog. 

This morning while he sat in the garden in the 
softest of grey tweeds, with his outstretched legs 
crossed and resting upon the tiles, she heard his 
drawling voice as she placed the coffee service 
fastidiously on the big silver tray in the pantry. 
Ellen liked to fondle the Blaydon china and sil¬ 
ver. It was spoiling her; she would never want to 
touch anything less valuable. 

“I dare say it sounds like blasphemy to you,” 
Mr. Blaydon was saying, “but I’m sick of this 
place after all. I used to think I never should 
be.” 

“It’s partly Jennie’s long illness. Poor boy, 
you’ve had a good deal to contend with.” 

“I? Nonsense! But I ought to get her away 
from here. She could pull together faster in the 


76 BLINDFOLD 

country. That is to say, if she ever has strength 
enough to be moved. And there are the boys. 
Pm beginning to think this is no locality for them 
to grow up in. If I toss a pebble over the wall 
there it will land square in the melting pot—per¬ 
haps on some anarchist’s head who will throw a 
bomb at me one of these days.” 

‘ ‘It’s extraordinary how well Trezevant has 
held its own. There seems to be a spirit in the 
place that won’t allow it to be tainted.” 

“Tainted enough by coal smoke!” he retorted. 
“Spirits won’t stop that. I’d really like to get 
out, way out. Not just to follow the crowd, as 
they say, but we’ve never had a satisfactory coun¬ 
try place, and I’ve come to think you can’t unless 
you make it a life accomplishment.” 

“A life is hardly enough, my dear brother,” re¬ 
plied Mrs. Seymour. ‘ 4 Trezevant is the accom¬ 
plishment of three generations.” 

“Bah!” he replied, good-humouredly, “we’re 
not the slow coaches we used to be. You can get 
twice as much done these days in a third of the 
time.” 

“Well, at any rate, it’s unpractical now,” she 
replied, and he recognized the finality of her tone. 

Blaydon smoked his cigar in silence, while she 
finished her second black coffee and leaned back in 
her chair swinging a tiny foot of which she was 
proud. In the shimmering, palpable light, shot 
with many colours, Mathilda’s face and hair were 


BLINDFOLD 


77 

still amazingly pretty. There were many who 
would have accepted the kind of slavery that mar¬ 
riage with her would have entailed, and some 
among them who had no need for her money. But 
she was not thinking of that. The arts of vanity 
had ceased to be a conscious lure; they were the 
essentials of well-bred self-cultivation. She had 
accepted her widowhood as the final failure of 
man, so far as she was concerned. It had been a 
romantic love match, ecstatic but unhappy, the 
kind that she fancied exhausted the capacity for 
passion; and now her thoughts ran upon the fu¬ 
ture of her brother’s household. For if Blaydon 
entertained any illusions about the possibility of 
his wife’s recovery, Mathilda did not. 

She had long held certain opinions regarding 
Jennie, which were not shared by the outside 
world. One of them was that her brother had 
never loved her, that he had found this out almost 
immediately after marrying, and determined to 
live the thing through because of his old-fashioned 
loyalty. Mathilda had quite certain knowledge 
that in the midst of the honeymoon he had rushed 
away and stayed several days. She knew it had 
been his hour of terrible trial, his angry realiza¬ 
tion of having made the first major mistake of his 
life, and made it in full maturity. His sister was 
proud of him for remaining a tree of marriage in 
a clearing of divorce stumps—for such their social 
world was rapidly becoming. 


78 


BLINDFOLD 


But her theory was that Jennie had never for¬ 
given him, never in a sense recovered from it. 
She had welcomed her children in order the more 
to seal up the truth from others; but she had 
borne them late, and the birth of the second son, 
Bobert, had doomed her to physical helplessness. 

This theory explained to Mathilda every pecu¬ 
liarity of Mrs. Blay don’s character, every inex¬ 
plicable episode which had occurred in the house 
since she had joined them. Jennie had never 
liked her; perhaps suspected that she knew her 
secret. Part of Jennie’s satisfaction in having 
the children was that they would help her to 
dominate her sister-in-law and the household, in 
the role of mother. As adversaries they had a 
healthy respect for each other. But Jennie’s sus¬ 
tained firmness of will was less effective than Ma¬ 
thilda’s, because it was less charming and less 
hidden. Luck was simply against Jennie. It was 
Mathilda who would win and then (though Blay- 
don did not know she had thought much about it) 
they would go to the country. Naturally this 
would be their first move. It was inevitable be¬ 
cause it was the thing that people of their sort 
were doing, and because automobiles had made it 
feasible. 

As though she felt that she might hint some of 
this that was in her mind, she broke the silence. 

“ Speaking of the country, I’ve had my eye for 


BLINDFOLD 79 

a long time on those tracts in the Errant River 
hills, where the McNutts have bought.’’ 

Sterling Blaydon slowly took his cigar from his 
mouth and smiled. Like all men of means he liked 
to have opportunities to display his foresight pre¬ 
sented to him without going out of his way to in¬ 
vite them. 

4 ‘Well then, you’ve had your eye on what will 
in all probability be your future home. I’ve been 
picking up that land right along. I’ve got about 
three hundred acres of it. Moreover, though the 
Country Club site committee hasn’t decided offi¬ 
cially yet, I know for a fact they are going to take 
the contiguous property. It’s cheap enough just 
now, and the club isn’t lavish.” 

He was fully satisfied with the glance of ad¬ 
miration Mathilda gave him. 

“Why, Sterling,” she said, “how long have you 
been at that?” 

“Since a little while after Hal was born. I got 
to thinking then this wouldn’t do.” 

“Well, it never occurred to me until this year.” 

He rose, stretching to his full height to shake 
the indolence from his body. 

“I’ve even got an architect to work. But I dare 
say you’re right and we can’t think about it yet. 
I certainly can’t drag Jennie through a radical 
change like that, and I haven’t even told her for 
fear it would fret her. But the moment she’s bet- 


80 


BLINDFOLD 


ter—■ You don’t say whether you would really 
like it or not, Mathilda.” 

“Certainly I shall like it, dear boy.” 

He went off humming to his wife’s room, before 
going out. He was, Mathilda thought, more at¬ 
tentive to her than many an enamoured husband, 
and she admired him for it. 

The idea of moving to the country at first fright¬ 
ened Ellen, with that pitiful fear which all de¬ 
pendents have of impending change. What will 
become of them, they ask themselves, in the gen¬ 
eral forgetfulness!—and a hundred misgivings 
and imagined instances of dissatisfaction on the 
part of their masters throng their minds. 

But had she felt secure it would have pleased 
her. The old house was too formal, too heavy 
;with the fragrances and lingering stiffness of a 
past day. She could never quite grow to like the 
eternal quiet. A hearty clattering now and then 
would have relieved her pent-up vitality. She 
would have liked, just once in a long, long while 
to listen to one of Tom Meadowburn’s stories, or 
hear Bennet shouting in the back yard. 


VIII 


But Mrs. Blaydon grew neither better nor 
worse and they remained at Trezevant Place. 
And when Moira was a year and a half old a 
fresh sorrow visited her mother. So rapid and 
unforeseen were the steps by which it came that 
Ellen scarcely realized what was happening. 

To her, indeed, the child seemed to acquire new 
marvels of goodness and beauty every day, but 
she imagined it was only her mother’s pride that 
made her think so. She was not the sort who 
would boast of the deeds of her offspring. 

Then she grew aware that others shared her 
interest. More and more, in particular, she found 
the child, when she came to look for her, in the 
company of Aunt Mathilda, even in that lady’s 
arms, most happily at home and warmly welcome. 

“It is going to be very improving for Moira,” 
was her thought, and she realized with a pang 
that she had been reading Hugo’s book for more 
than a year now, and was not yet halfway through 
it. 

Mrs. Seymour’s brother was among those who 
noticed her partiality for the baby. 

“Look,” she said to him one day, with enthu¬ 
siasm, holding out one of the child’s tiny pink 

81 


82 


BLINDFOLD 


hands, “how remarkably made they are. She’s 
the same all over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen 
such a perfect baby.” 

Blaydon laughed, thereby eliciting a brilliant 
response in kind from Moira. The vibrations of 
his big voice had tickled her young flesh. 

“Well, Mathilda, the broadest road to your 
heart is still a pair of hands. I remember your 
telling me that poor old Ned first got you with 
his.’’ 

“Hands and feet,” she replied. “I don’t mind 
anything else but they ought to be beautiful. ’ ’ 

A few days afterward he came upon her in the 
garden, again with Ellen’s daughter. 

“Que voulez-vous, ” she was saying, “que vou¬ 
lez-vous, ma p’tite? Voulez-vous maman?” 

The soft syllables seemed to please Moira’s 
ears, for she was mirthfully bubbling things that 
sounded not unlike them. As Blaydon stepped out 
he thought his sister a little apologetic, but she 
did not put down the child. 

“The little thing wandered out here while I 
was reading,” she said. “She quite seems to fol¬ 
low me about.” 

“You don’t find it annoying?” he asked. 

Her reply served notice upon him that she had 
caught his note of irony. 

“Oh, no. . . . I’m not such a busy woman as all 
that. ’ ’ 

He glanced at the book she had been reading. 


BLINDFOLD 83 

It lay flung face downward with both backs spread 
out on the table, “Le Crime de Sylvestre Bon¬ 
nard/ ’ Blaydon recalled the story and somehow 
connected it in his mind with his sister’s essential 
solitude—her dependence upon his own family for 
affection. 

“I suppose,” he pursued, the thought forming 
suddenly from nowhere, i 6 that you are going to 
adopt her?” 

Mathilda looked up sharply. She pretended to 
detect in his words more of approval than of in¬ 
quiry and replied as though he had offered a sug¬ 
gestion. 

‘ ‘You’re not serious, Sterling?” 

Blaydon’s intuition surprised him. He had 
struck fire, where hardly more than a joke had 
been intended. 

“Why not?” he asked, with a good-natured 
shrug. 

“It seems cruel, somehow,” she replied. Her 
tone was as detached as though she had said, “it 
seems too green,” of a dress-cloth. 

“I can’t quite see that. Mothers are proverbi¬ 
ally unselfish—” 

“She would have to be brought up with your 
boys, Sterling. Have you thought of that?” 

He had not thought of that and there was more 
to Mathilda’s remark than banter. As if to influ¬ 
ence his reply, the youngest boy, Robert, three 
and a half, scampered past them and climbed upon 


84 


BLINDFOLD 


a favourite seat, between two clipped boxwood 
trees, chattering to himself and grinning across at 
his father as if to say, “I dare you to come and 
get me!” But Blaydon ignored him for the 
moment. He did not know that Mathilda’s mind 
had gone all over this matter of adoption, and that 
the question she had just put to him, in spite of 
its unconcerned air, was really a crucial one with 
her. Upon his feeling about it would depend a 
great deal, yet this did not imply that she felt her¬ 
self bound to accept his decisions. There were 
scores of things that she might do if the whim 
possessed her, in spite of him. Blaydon was aware 
of this, and though he did not know how much 
she had thought about the child, he was inclined 
toward caution. She was a good sister—a better 
mother, he honestly believed, for his children than 
their own. . . . When he answered it was with a 
laugh that had the effect upon Mathilda of some 
one opening a door she wanted to go through. 

‘ i Well, I don’t know,” he went on, slowly. “I 
suppose that Ellen is a fixture anyhow, and young 
cubs are more likely to fall in love with a really 
beautiful Cinderella than just a handsome cousin. 
That is if the child is beautiful. How on earth 
can you tell anything about them at that age ? ’ ’ 
“You can tell the day after they are born,” 
snapped back Mrs. Seymour. “I would venture 
to sit down and write the lives of your two sons 


BLINDFOLD 85 

to-day, and I shouldn ’t be far from the truth, bar¬ 
ring death and accidents.” 

‘‘ So?’ 7 he asked, ‘ 4 and have I anything to fear! ’ 7 

“Oh, no, they’ll come back to the fold, even as 
you did!” 

Her look was one of benevolent sarcasm and he 
grinned. There were many things worse to re¬ 
member than the pretty women of his younger 
days. But he had come back to the fold . . . that 
was true, and it was not so pleasant after all. 
Change would be kind. He reached over and 
touched the blond head of his boy, who was sitting 
on the tiles now at his feet. 

“Poor old Rob, she’s got you catalogued,” he 
said, and the talk of adoption stopped. Neither of 
them had taken it seriously—Jennie, unmentioned, 
remained insurmountable. But Mathilda had en¬ 
tered her wedge, without an effort. Being in¬ 
tensely feminine, circumstances moved toward 
her, not she toward them, an achievement that re¬ 
sulted from indicating definitely first, then vaguely 
opposing, everything she wanted. 

Blaydon lifted his boy to his shoulder and 
walked through the house to the drawing room 
windows. He talked little more than monosyllab¬ 
ically to his children and had a great way of still¬ 
ing their excited glee, when he wanted to, by the 
tone of his voice. As they stood at the window 
he wished that his gaze could go on over rolling 


86 


BLINDFOLD 


hills to the horizon. He wanted these boys to 
grow up with horses and vigorous sports; to see 
them framed against green earth and wide skies. 
He wanted them to draw in their early apprecia¬ 
tions from the bare soil of their own land. Some¬ 
how that now appeared to him a spiritual neces¬ 
sity of which he had had too little himself, and it 
was the leading ambition that possessed him after 
a life of sophisticated pleasure. 

A week later Mrs. Blaydon died. It was as 
though the new direction of their thoughts had 
penetrated to her intuitively and left her without 
strength to battle further. 

It was not long before Blaydon felt free to go 
ahead with his plans. But the speed with which 
Mathilda proceeded to execute hers surprised and 
even shocked him. She did not go directly to 
Ellen. Instead she consulted Dr. Schottman, and 
readily gained his partisanship. It was from 
Schottman that Ellen first heard of Aunt Ma¬ 
thilda^ intentions toward Moira. . . . 

For the life of her she could not tell at first 
whether she was happy or miserable at the sug¬ 
gestion. In one moment she rejoiced over the 
good fortune of her daughter; in the next she ex¬ 
perienced a sense of terrible deprivation and lone¬ 
liness. She was not so sentimental as to minimize 
the extent of her renunciation—to hope that some 
crumbs from the table of Moira’s affection would 
fall to her. It meant a thorough transfer of par- 


BLINDFOLD 


87 


enthood and a ruthless blotting out of the truth. 
One of Mrs. Seymour’s reasons for adopting the 
child at once, as she explained to Schottman, was 
that the boys were young enough to grow up none 
the wiser. Ellen did not deceive herself. Moira 
would never know her, never think of her except 
as a servant. 

She recalled sorrowfully the two happy pros¬ 
pects she had brought with her into that house, 
41 Moira will love me when she is grown up, and 
we will do so many nice things together,” and 
1 ‘Who knows, some day Moira may have a 
father. ...” But Moira would never have a real 
father now through her, and Moira would never 
love her in the sense she had meant. A gleam of 
comfort crept in the chinks of her hopeless specu¬ 
lation. 

“If Moira should learn about this, much, much 
later—years later when it could do no harm— 
about how I have given her up, she would love me 
all the more ! 9 9 

But the stray gleam crept out at once, leaving 
her mind darker than before. Moira would never 
know, never understand anything of all she had 
gone through. She buried her face in the pillow. 
In the middle of the night she suddenly started 
up, feeling frantically about the room for she 
knew not what. Was it affection, love, just the 
touch of something familiar! For Moira, of 
course . . . but what a fool! Moira was gone, 


BLINDFOLD 


88 

even the crib was gone. She was alone, absolutely 
alone, for the rest of her life. 

As she stumbled back to her bed, her hand en¬ 
countered the big volume of “Les Miserables.” 
She caught it up and held it to her breast. The 
book had grown to be a symbol for her of their 
life together in fabulous years to come. Now 
those years were dead. The book was no longer 
necessary, no longer had any meaning. . . . Ellen 
put it away in one of the drawers of her bureau. 
She would never have to read in its pages again. 
It would be better if she did not, better that the 
gulf between them should widen rather than di¬ 
minish. 


IX 


It is four o’clock of a September afternoon 
and brightly still. Over on the clean rolling golf 
course tiny figures in all combinations of white 
and grey and brown move like insects soundlessly 
from one point to another making odd motions. 
Even the jays which have been haggling and 
shrieking all day are quiet. An occasional tree- 
toad or katydid creaks from the false dusk of the 
Eastern woods. Locusts drone, and from a long 
way off comes the faint click of a reaping machine 
at intervals, but all these sounds only accentuate 
the silence. An eternal, slow-breathing calm rests 
upon the tree tops waiting patiently for the cold 
of autumn. 

With a murmur that grows into a rumble the 

« 

stillness is broken by a monstrous motor truck 
which swerves into the driveway from the road a 
quarter of a mile away and comes tumbling down 
the white track, its racket increasing with its near¬ 
ness. The driver noisily shunts his gears at the 
kitchen door, and Ellen Sydney comes out to su¬ 
perintend the unloading and disposition of sup¬ 
plies. This done and the truckman sent away 
with a laugh, she strolls into the garden on that 
side of the house and is presently at work with a 

89 


90 


BLINDFOLD 


pair of shears snipping asters and marigolds for 
the table. There are many of them, so many they 
must be gathered in profusion. She has the air of 
one who is at home among the beds, who has 
worked on them and cherished them with her own 
hands. 

She is a handsomer woman than before. Her 
figure has decidedly taken on dignity, and the 
colour of her face is a healthy brown pink. Her 
cheeks, thanks to the best skill of the Blaydon 
dentist, have lost their sunken hollows and her 
eyes have deepened from the effect of well-being 
and contented activity. She bears herself with 
some authority too, having taken a favoured place 
in her division of the housework. Her hair is 
greying very slightly over the ears and temples, 
but her step is as quick and her back as straight 
as a girl’s. She wears a blue uniform with sleeves 
rolled up and a white apron. 

As she reaches the entrance portico, her arms 
overflowing with the yellow and brown and purple 
flowers, a little girl of six or so with dark hair 
bursts from the screen door. 

“Ellney, Ellney. Give me a cookie. I’m hun¬ 
gry.” 

“Can’t you wait till dinner, Miss Moira? Your 
mother wouldn’t like it.” 

“Oh, what’s one cookie? Maman won’t mind 
just one.” 

“She will if she finds out, and if you don’t eat 


BLINDFOLD 


91 


your dinner. It’s me that will get the lecture, 
not you!”—and with a look backward into the 
past, Ellen thinks of a hoy who was once always 
asking for something to eat. The boy’s face has 
so dimmed in her mind now that if there is a 
resemblance she does not notice it. 

“Maman shan’t lecture you, Ellney. I shan’t 
ever let her lecture you.” 

Ellen laughs, not only at what Moira says, but 
at the way she says it. She cannot ever get over 
the fact that her own child—who is now no longer 
her child—speaks the King’s English quite as 
carefully as her well-bred elders, and has adopted 
an air of superiority in her own right. But in 
Ellen’s laughter there is no ridicule. It is the 
sheer pleasure of maternal pride. Does not 
Moira, they say, speak French almost as well as 
English? 

“You little darling,’! she cries, stooping and 
endeavouring to take the child’s hand in spite of 
her overflowing burden, “I’ll give you just one.” 

“No, two, Ellney—but one is for Hal, on my 
word. Isn’t it funny, he’s afraid to ask! ’ ’ 

Ellen thought there never had been a child whose 
laughter was more like everything good and who 
laughed more often than Moira. . . . 

Turning in from the Marquette road to Sterling 
Blaydon’s new country house, “Thornhill” as 
they called it, a visitor with a sculptor’s eye might 


m 


BLINDFOLD 


describe the formation of the land as the huge 
thigh of a woman, resting horizontally on the 
earth. The private driveway ran along the crest 
which sloped on both sides downward to gentle 
valleys, while the whole ridge tapered in width 
gradually to a round end or knee on which rested 
the house in a semicircle of green. Beyond the 
house lay a few hundred feet of clipped lawn and 
well spaced trees, and then the Titan calf plunged 
into the earth, its declivitous sides covered with 
exposed rock and a thick undergrowth of every 
imaginable scrub and bramble, with a plentiful 
scattering of dogwood and plumb and thorn. It 
was holy with blossoms in the Spring, beginning 
with the ghostly shad-bush. The edge of the hill 
overlooked a broad meadow fifty yards below, as 
flat as a lake. 

Spread out in three directions from this crown¬ 
ing point lay Blaydon’s land, perhaps a third of it 
in rocky knolls and wood, and the remainder under 
cultivation by tenant farmers. The driveway to 
the site led almost due west but the axis of the 
house itself, which was narrow and long despite 
Its irregularities, turned toward the south. It 
~was built to the shingle eaves of rubble-rock and 
dominated at either end by two enormous chim¬ 
neys of the same gorgeous, parti-coloured mate¬ 
rial, all of which had been found on the place. 
Broad verandahs, a wide, tiled terrace reached by 
French windows; a quaint Dutch Colonial door 


BLINDFOLD 


93 


and portico facing the road; screened balconies 
skilfully masked by the eaves; the great living 
and dining rooms and library which took up al¬ 
most all of the lower floor; the correspondingly 
spacious chambers overhead, attested its inhabi¬ 
tants ’ means and love of comfort. The entrance 
lawn and slopes to the north were laid out in series 
of irregular, charming gardens. On the south¬ 
east the hill descended almost horizontally from 
the tiled and parapeted terrace near the house* 
so that from the living room windows one looked 
through the tops of trees to the Country Club on 
another hill less than a mile away. 

With greater spaces had come more movement* 
more things to be interested in, more excitement 
and sound, all of which Ellen had welcomed. She 
meddled in everything. She had become a credita¬ 
ble sub-assistant gardener and something of a 
bee-keeper, having watched the professionals at 
work. The four dogs were her especial care. Two 
were morbidly shy collies called ‘ ‘ Count ” and 
‘‘Countess” by Mathilda, and Ellen won the 
privilege of touching their magnificent coats and 
standing by while they fed, only after many 
months of gentleness and coaxing. They seldom 
allowed the other members of the household 
to come near them and ran wild in the woods. 
On the other hand the beagle and setter were al¬ 
most annoyingly chummy. The animals in the 
stable had their daily histories also, which con- 


94 


BLINDFOLD 


cerned her intimately. She was a splendid milker 
in emergencies and would have liked to keep 
fowls, but this Mathilda, who respected sleep in 
the mornings, would not permit. 

Of the two boys in the house, Hal, nine and a 
half, was the keener-witted and the more attrac¬ 
tive. He was already at home among the horses 
and rode bare-back as well as in the saddle. She 
often felt sorry for Rob, who was left behind 
much of the time by his older brother and the 
swift, tiny Moira, but she did not humour him as 
much as she did Hal. 

It was Hal, however, who had ridden a cow so 
successfully one day that Moira pleaded to be 
helped up herself, and whether the beast thought 
her a less formidable antagonist, or was frightened 
by her skirts, the little girl was thrown off and 
severely jolted. Hal supported her into the house, 
himself more frightened than she, and vowed to 
his aunt solemnly that from that day he would 
never lead her into danger again, and if she got 
into it he would get her out. Yet she and the boy 
quarrelled too and sometimes went for days with¬ 
out speaking. Moira would take up with Rob then, 
scheming with all her mind to devise adventures 
that would make his brother envious. She often 
succeeded in these stratagems, until a time came 
when he did not concern himself with her at all, 
being grown beyond little girls. 

The elaborate arrangements which had been 


BLINDFOLD 


95 


made for Moira from the first, and the increasing 
complexity of the child’s education, which had 
been undertaken very early by Mrs. Seymour, 
made it easier for Ellen to regard her as a mem¬ 
ber of the Blaydon family. It was only when 
Moira misbehaved within her knowledge or in her 
sight, that the true mother felt it hard to play 
her neutral role. While Moira was good she was 
a Seymour, naturally, but when she was bad she 
seemed to Ellen to be wholly her own. Ellen’s 
impulse then, in spite of the habit of suppression, 
was to correct her as a mother would. 

When these occasions had passed and she could 
reflect back on them, she thought it a blessing 
that Moira’s correction was in the hands of others 
than herself. One instance of Mrs. Seymour’s 
wise manner of dealing with unusual conduct filled 
her mind with wonder and created for her almost 
a new conception of life. 

Aunt Mathilda was consulting with her in the 
kitchen when Moira burst in and cried: 

“Maman, oh, Maman, the calf came right out of 
the cow! I saw it. I did. ’ ’ 

The child’s face was a study. She did not ap¬ 
parently know whether to be very grave, or a little 
frightened or to laugh, and in one who was so 
rarely puzzled it would have seemed pathetic 
had her sudden announcement been less shocking 
than it was. As they learned afterward, she had 
witnessed the birth, by sheer accident, while in 


96 


BLINDFOLD 


the stables with Harvey. Ellen blushed scarlet 
and was on the point of exclaiming indignantly, 
but Mrs. Seymour checked her with a gesture 
and took the child in her lap. Then she said in a 
tone the most natural in the world: 

“Why, certainly, my dear. That is what hap¬ 
pens when all animals are born, and people too. 
First we are carried in our mothers. Then we 
walk by ourselves, just as the calf will in a day or 
two. Now you won’t ever forget that, will you?” 

Beginning the middle of September and for 
eight months each year, Miss Cheyney, the gov¬ 
erness, came every morning at nine, and quiet 
reigned while she went over the lessons with the 
three children shut up in the library. After 
luncheon, Eberhard, the man, took her back by 
motor to the train as he had brought her. 

Ellen was always glad to see her visits begin, 
not only because Miss Cheyney was very demo¬ 
cratic and “nice” to her, and proud of Moira’s 
progress, but because they ushered in the Fall. 
She loved the glorious colours that spread out in 
widening and deepening hues over the wooded 
hills, until all the world seemed to have put on a 
flaming cloak. She and the children would fill the 
house with sumach and maple branches then. 
And when the men began bringing up the heavy 
logs that had lain drying in the woods all sum¬ 
mer and sawing and splitting them for the fire¬ 
places in the house, she could see in anticipation 


BLINDFOLD 


97 

the flames leaping in the chimney and hear the 
crackling of the wood in the fierce heat, and watch 
the glow of dancing light on the children’s faces. 
She had not seen open fireplaces since the New 
Orleans days, when they were lighted only for a 
few weeks in the year; and never had she seen 
anything to compare with the one in the Blaydon 
living room which was so high a woman could 
stand in it while she cleaned. 

And then the parties began. There were nearly 
always two big ones each Winter, and between 
them a constant stream of dinners and late motor 
parties, and informal crowds who tramped over 
from the Club to dance. Ellen loved to hear the 
music going at full tilt, the new jazz music that 
was just coming in. She didn’t mind, as much as 
she should have, the young men getting tipsy. 
She was thrilled to watch the couples disappear 
down through the trees, laughing and chatting, 
eager to escape the floods of light that poured from 
every window in the house; or slip into their mo¬ 
tors for a drive along the dark roads. 

She had always thought of Sterling Blaydon as 
a reserved and serious man, and she wondered 
how he stood so much excitement. Then she real¬ 
ized that she was dealing with a new Sterling 
Blaydon, who not only stood it but encouraged it. 
His pride in the place and his love of filling it with 
people was like a boy’s. 

A great part of the pleasure she took in these 


98 


BLINDFOLD 


affairs arose from the fact that her daughter was 
a favourite. Tall, important men and dazzling 
young women were attentive to Moira and Moira 
enjoyed it as much as they did. She was growing 
extraordinarily self-possessed, particularly with 
her elders. Often enough the frank equality she 
adopted toward them made Ellen gasp. 

Only in the dead of winter, when the snow piled 
up a foot or two everywhere and the drifts some¬ 
times were up to a man’s middle, would they be 
without company for many days at a time. Dur¬ 
ing this brief closed season—for it did not last 
long at the worst—Mr. Blaydon usually lived in 
town, and sometimes Mrs. Seymour would join 
him there, when engagements came in bunches or 
the theatres were particularly interesting. And 
the children, freed from their teacher, would be 
idle. 

Coming upon Moira alone at such times, with 
her constituted guardians away and out of mind, 
Ellen experienced her moments of gravest temp¬ 
tation. How she longed then to take the young¬ 
ster in her arms and pour out the floods of love 
pent up within her. These yearnings were made 
all the more unbearable by the simple affection 
with which she was nearly always greeted by her 
daughter; yet at the same time the child’s own at¬ 
titude strengthened her resistance. For Ellen 
stood in awe of her. The force of training, the 
sedulously cultivated point of view, the entirely 




BLINDFOLD 


99 


different environment had already stamped her 
with the mark of another caste. Ellen could not 
look upon her for more than an instant as simply 
the object of possessive human feeling. It would 
sweep over her at some childlike expression, some 
quaint, serious look. It would be checked by some 
unlooked for sophistication of gesture or remark. 

Moira familiarly uttered the names of grown 
young men who to Ellen were no more than shad¬ 
ows from an upper world, coldly courteous ghosts 
who did not see her even when they looked at her. 
Every season the little girl extended her interests 
and knowledge into a wider world and grew more 
alien. And gradually as the years flew by even 
the servants who had been in the old Trezevant 
place when they came there, and who somehow 
seemed to preserve for her, by their presence, the 
actuality of her motherhood, passed, until there 
was not one left. Gina, whose sympathy she had 
felt most keenly, though the sprightly Italian said 
nothing, was the last. And Gina went away to be 
married. . . . 


i > 

j > 

> » > 

> , 


> 




X 


To be nearly sixteen; to have a great room all 
to oneself, with high windows that looked upon 
surfs of close, glittering, talkative leaves, and hills 
far oft between them; to have a small library of 
one’s favourite books, and a whole corner of the 
room devoted to the paraphernalia of one’s dear¬ 
est hobby, which was painting; to have a square 
high bed, covered with a tester, and a wonderful, 
many-shelved Sheraton table beside it, and can¬ 
dles in old green brass candlesticks; to have a row 
of white, built-in armoires full of pretty dresses 
and cloaks and shoes; to have all this and to know 
one has helped to create it, was to possess a shrine 
where the thoughts of girlhood might safely let 
themselves go to all the four winds of the imagina¬ 
tion, like many-coloured birds set free, unmindful 
of the traps and huntsmen scouring the world 
beyond. 

But Moira’s real favourite was not the lovely 
golden brown tapestry, nor the stained little bas 
relief of the Child, nor even the drawings of 
Michelangelo and Rembrandt, but a painting 
hung on the wall facing the foot of her bed, where 
she could look at it the first thing in the morning 
as she rose, and the last thing at night as she re¬ 
tired. It was a portrait of Mathilda’s grand- 

100 


BLINDFOLD 


101 


mother at eighteen, painted in Virginia, a year 
before she crossed the plains with her young hus¬ 
band. The smooth, dark red hair was parted and 
drawn about the head above the ears like a cap, its 
gleam of colour apparent only in the gloss of the 
high lights. The blue eyes and fresh complexion 
and fine, regular features were done with infinite 
tenderness. She sat in a black gown, opening 
wide at the neck, against a red background 
formed by a cloak thrown over the chair. Moira 
knew it was good painting, of an exquisite older 
style, though the name of the painter was unsigned 
and had long been forgotten. She amused herself 
making little verses about it. 

“My young great grandmother sits in her frame 

And the red of her cloak burns warm as a flame . . .” 

Many a time she sat up in her bed pretending 
to have conversations about the stirring adven¬ 
tures of her grandmother’s early days, for she 
had heard the whole story of the young woman’s 
arduous journey and home-building—and also 
about the young men who came to Thornhill, dis¬ 
cussing their characters without reserve. One 
could do this in perfect propriety with a dead 
great grandmother. 

‘ 1 Tommy McNutt wants to come over every day 
and ride with me, Grandmother. But he squints 
out of doors, and he always wants to help you on 



102 


BLINDFOLD 


a horse and he talks like a newspaper piece. I’d 
rather have somebody to talk to like old George 
Moore, wouldn’t you, dear? It’s a pity you were 
born too early to read George Moore. I know 
you would like him”—and she broke off for rhyme 
again: 

“The courtly old painter I am sure wore lace 

And the things he said brought a flush to her face.” 

“But if I should like Tommy I’d have a whole 
house as big as this one all my own. And if I 
should like Mark Sturm, the young brewer, I’d 
have two. ... I don’t care, Maman will give me 
a house.” 

“Then there’s Selden Van Nostrand. He’s 
tremendously popular because he makes up verses 
about i Aphrodite in a nightie,’ but he sometimes 
does better than that. The other day he said his 
heart was a leaf devoured by the worm of Ego¬ 
tism, shrivelled in the fire of Sex, and trampled 
by the feet of Virtue. I see you like that one, 
Grandma. Beautiful Grandma, I have your 
eyes— 

“Her wide blue eyes have a trace of play 
And the day she sat was a fine bright day!” 

Moira finished her morning cup of tea on the 
stand beside the bed and recalled suddenly that 
this fine, bright day was one of special signifi- 



BLINDFOLD 


103 


cance, for Hal was coming home from his last year 
at prep school. Hal was the one young man she 
never talked to her great grandmother about, be¬ 
cause, as she explained to herself, she was his 
great grandmother also and would be prejudiced. 
She stood in the sunlight pouring through the 
window, watching it gleam upon her firm shoul¬ 
ders and flanks. She had not decided whether she 
would go to the station with her mother and Uncle 
Sterling or not. 

Hal had treated her pretty badly the summer 
before and been very satirical, and the worst of it 
was she had found it hard to resent because he 
had seemed suddenly to be much older and to have 
some right to authority. He had been nicer at 
Christmas, taking her to two parties and giving 
her a set of Verlaine bound in tooled leather, but 
even when he tried to be nice to her he had some¬ 
how seemed condescending. 

She was in great doubt. Nobody, of course, 
would attach any significance to it, whichever she 
did, not even Hal, probably. It was only impor¬ 
tant to herself. She knew something had hap¬ 
pened to her during the past year that was com¬ 
parable to the change in Hal the year before. 
She had evidence now under her hands and in her 
eyes as she stood undressed, evidence that did not 
wholly please her, for she had lately taken a fancy 
to dislike women. More satisfactory evidence was 
a sense of mental growth. 


104 


BLINDFOLD 


She had just returned from a long Spring va¬ 
cation in New York with Mathilda, not her first 
visit but her most exciting one, and her thoughts 
were awhirl with Pavlova and Bachmaninoff and 
the Washington Square Players, bobbed hair and 
the operas at the Metropolitan, and a dozen start¬ 
ling, vivifying, even violent art exhibitions. She 
felt that she was probably much more splashed 
by the currents than Hal himself, for certainly 
one did not really learn anything at a boy’s school. 
Such places could only be high class stables for 
thoroughbred colts to pass the awkward stage in, 
under trainers far less capable than those they 
would have had if they were horses. 

And now the question was whether to test the 
glamour of these mental and physical acquisitions 
upon Hal by waiting to meet him alone, or to go 
like a good fellow and see him with the family. 
There was, of course, nothing personal about it; 
Hal was no more than an opportune judge. He 
represented the best criticism the East had to 
send back to them. 

After her bath she decided for action. She 
would go with the others and meet him. “Any 
way, why attach so much importance to Hal! 
He’s quite capable of attaching enough to him¬ 
self.” 

There was the possibility, too, of dramatic in¬ 
terest in his arrival. The year before, on his re- 


BLINDFOLD 


105 


turn, at eighteen, he had boldly announced to his 
father he was going to war. There wasn't to be 
a day lost, he wanted to go at once. Every man 
in his class was going somehow or other. Sterling 
Blaydon opposed it, the argument dragged out for 
days, and finally the family won. But it was only 
with the understanding that if Hal would finish 
his last year at school he might make his own de¬ 
cision. The country’s participation in the war 
was now over a year old and the outlook was dis¬ 
mal, one German advance after another having 
succeeded. There were plenty of youngsters of 
nineteen and twenty in it, and Hal would insist 
upon enlisting. He had, as a matter of fact, and 
as his letters showed, done almost no schooling at 
Fanstock that year. The entire institution had 
been made over into a training camp. 

Moira remembered how her cousin had chafed 
the summer before, hating his idleness and the 
wretched fate of being in excessive demand to en¬ 
tertain girls. Her sympathy with his groans had 
gone a long way to help her forgive his ill treat¬ 
ment. 

And yet she had never been worked up to a 
pitch of great excitement about the war. 

One failing had troubled her ever since she 
could remember—the tendency to disagree with 
opinions as soon as an overwhelming majority 
held them. 


106 


BLINDFOLD 


It was partly due to the example of Mathilda’s 
own fastidiousness and independence of judg¬ 
ment, but she went farther than Mathilda, and 
supposed that she must have inherited this incon¬ 
venient trait from that mythical father of whom 
she had been told so little and longed to know so 
much. At all events, she arrived at certain con¬ 
clusions, by herself, about the war: for example, 
that perhaps Germany was not entirely the in¬ 
stigator, that cruelties were probably practised 
on both sides—war’s horrors produced them— 
and that after all it did seem as though the whole 
world was furiously pitted against two or three 
caged-in nations. 

She did not entirely like herself for these 
heresies and kept silent upon them. But she 
promised herself the fun of an argument with HaL 
How it would irritate him! 

“He’ll think I’ve lost my mind. Perhaps he’ll 
surrender me to the authorities. How wonderful 
—I wish he would!” 

She took one final glimpse of herself and walked 
slowly out of the room to face a hard day. She 
felt she would prove a formidable antagonist for 
Hal. 

But downstairs a surprise was waiting. She 
found Mathilda, suppressing a few tears, and her 
Uncle sitting in a profound study. Their disap¬ 
pointment communicated itself to her at once. 
Something had happened about Hal. 


BLINDFOLD 107 

Mrs. Seymour indicated the yellow night-letter 
on the table. 

“Dear Father and Aunt [it read]: Of- 
ered chance to join aviation training corps. 
Long Island, at once. No time to come home. 
Wish me luck enough to get over soon. Love. 
Hal.” 

Well, that was sensation enough for her. He 
had acted with divine independence. 

The months that followed until the Armistice 
were dull and tragic. She would a hundred times 
rather have gone over herself, though it be as a 
rank flag-waver. It was all stupid, cunning, crimi¬ 
nal, got up by old men to kill young ones. It 
would be stupid enough to take Hal, her playmate. 
Night after night she saw him, mutilated or dead; 
she got so she could picture exactly the way a 
small hole looked in a man’s forehead, just the 
degree of red and blue about its tiny rim, and the 
relaxed, livid expression of a face that had been 
dead several hours. These pictures haunted her 
wakeful nights in many different guises, but al¬ 
ways with Hal’s features. She learned in imag¬ 
ination how flesh looked when it was laid open 
or gangrened, and the appearance of the end of 
a limb that had been taken off. And she grew so 
bitter that she found she could not pray, though 
she had always experienced a soothing pleasure 


108 


BLINDFOLD 


from the language of the Book of Common Prayer. 
She never said those pieces again. She would sit 
up suddenly in bed, as though she had been wak¬ 
ened by a barrage, and talk by fitful candlelight 
to her portrait. 


XI 

“And yon aren’t really sorry yon didn’t get 
over?” 

“Sorry? Wouldn’t yon be?” 

“Well, I don’t know. Considering the hordes 
of disillusioned veterans I’ve met this winter—” 

“At least they had a chance to get disillusioned 
in action. Something for their money. With me 
it’s just two years—practically three years—gone 
to pot, and a sort of feeling it isn’t worth while 
to go back at all. To college, I mean.” 

“You couldn’t start this time of year, could 
you?” 

“I suppose I could do something.” 

“It would be fun having you around until Fall 
—like old times.” 

Hal laughed shortly. 

“You’d care?” 

“I’ve had a good long spell of Thornhill alone, 
you know. Next year I shan’t mind, because I’ll 
be away at school myself.” 

“My Lord, Moira, have you anything more to 
learn?” 

“Oh, yes, I could learn to be useful, for in¬ 
stance.” 

“You manage to be most anything, if the no¬ 
tion strikes you.” 


109 


110 


BLINDFOLD 


“I’m not so crazy to go,” she mused. “I im¬ 
agine it’ll be rather awful. Formalities, lady lec¬ 
turers, highbrow girls with shell-rimmed glasses. 
They’ve been cramming education down the 
throats of the fashionable young for a generation 
and what’s the result? Country clubs, prohibi¬ 
tion, and a beastly war.” 

“Cynical, eh?” 

“No more than you would be, if you’d done 
nothing but read newspapers these last two years. 
I suppose now they’ll all combine and squeeze 
everything out of Germany that she has left— 
just as the Persians and the Greeks did, and the 
kings in the Bible. And there’ll be a lot of 
moralizing—more than ever. Of course, you’ll 
be glad. The victor is always spoiled.” 

“Pooh,” he laughed. “You’ve got me wrong. 
I don’t give a damn what they do. Say, the only 
principles I have left are principles of horseman¬ 
ship. I’m highly interested in the way you sit 
Elfin. ’ ’ 

“Isn’t she a beauty!” 

“tShe’s a pretty horse. But I wasn’t referring 
entirely to the equine part of the combination.” 

It was the first real day they had had together 
since Hal’s discharge from camp the week before. 
The weather was like an Indian summer after¬ 
noon, one of those exceedingly mild days of Feb¬ 
ruary between spells of stiff cold. They had been 
galloping along the high road, when Moira sud- 


BLINDFOLD 


111 


denly pulled up and turned her horse into a 
meandering lane, so narrow that the stripped 
branches met in sharply accentuated patterns over¬ 
head against the sky. The fields were a monoto¬ 
nous, hard stubbly brown, except where pockets of 
soiled snow lay in the holes and under the pro¬ 
tecting sides of hillocks. 

“Is Selden Van Nostrand coming out to-mor¬ 
row ?” asked Hal, after they had ridden a hun¬ 
dred yards in silence. 

“Yes.” 

“Does he come out often?” 

“Yes . . . let’s go as far as Corey’s Inn for a 
bite. I’m famishing, aren’t you?” 

“I don’t like him. I suppose you know that.” 

“You’re not going to be like the rest of the pa¬ 
triots, are you? Get so you despise anybody with 
a critical mind?” 

“I admire people who say what they mean as 
much as anybody. But I do object to Van Nos¬ 
trand, because he’s faintly rotten, and even his 
wit is literary. He always seems to be rehearsed. 
Anybody can do that Wilde thing if they study up 
on it long enough. The point is, is it worth 
while ? ’ ’ 

She laughed with a touch of malice. 

“You sound like a book review, Hal. His line 
is pretty easy, but it’s a line. Nobody ever even 
tries to be amusing here, and he not only tries but 
I think he succeeds.” 


112 


BLINDFOLD 


“It's from him, I suppose, you got this fellow- 
feeling for the Germans. Well, he had plenty of 
opportunity to cultivate it, staying at home.” 

Moira gave him a glance of friendliness. 

“Oh, it’s such fun to have you back, I don’t 
care what you say. If you knew all the dreams 
I’ve had, terrifying dreams, seeing you—hurt and 
cut up and dead. I’d wake up mad enough to kill 
Germans myself.” 

“Did you really dream about me, Moira?” He 
pulled his horse closer to hers, leaning as far as 
he could. The girl’s mount, disliking to be 
crowded, pranced out of control, and Hal had to 
swerve away, but he kept his eyes on the straight, 
slim figure. 

“God, Moira, what a beauty you’ve grown!” 

She began to murmur aloud: 

“When I was one and twenty 
I heard a wise man say 
Give crowns and pounds and guineas 
But not your heart away, 

Give gold away and rubies 
But keep your fancy free, 

But I was one and twenty, 

No use to talk to me.” 

“Moira!” he cried, hut she was gone, at full 
gallop down the lane. 

“Hurry!” she called back, “I’m nearly dead 
with hunger.” 


BLINDFOLD 


113 


And from there to the inn was a race. 

When they returned it was dark, and both were 
eager to reach the stables, but as they wheeled 
into the little pasture road which led through the 
tenant’s land and past Hermann Dietz’ house, a 
curious scene halted them. 

The house was a very old-fashioned small 
wooden dwelling, with a high stone foundation, 
built by the past generation of Dietzes twenty-five 
or thirty years before. The barn, larger than the 
house, was some twenty yards from the kitchen 
door, across a squalid cow yard. A dim lamp or 
two was burning in the house, but this was com¬ 
pletely deserted, the doors hanging open and giv¬ 
ing it a half-witted grimace. The centre of attrac¬ 
tion was a big double barn door. Around this, in 
a lighted semi-circle stood the Dietz family, con¬ 
sisting of the bony, tall, salmon-faced father, the 
emaciated, dreadfully stooped mother, and four 
children of varying ages. A curious murmur 
arose from the group, and riding closer, Moira 
and Hal saw that they were weeping. Beyond, 
they could catch a glimpse of the body of a horse, 
swaying slightly from side to side in its last agony, 
and casting monstrous shadows on the high cob- 
webbed walls behind, thrown by the lantern which 
stood on the ground at Hermann’s feet. 

Moira dismounted and signalled to Hal to fol¬ 
low her. 

“They’ve been grieving this way since yester- 


114 


BLINDFOLD 


day,” she whispered, “and to-day the veterinary 
told them he couldn’t save the horse.” 

The sobs arising from the pitiful group, two of 
the smallest of whom clung to their mother’s 
skirts and hid their faces, more frightened at the 
commotion than troubled about the horse, rose 
and fell with the spasms of suffering that swept 
over the dying beast. Moria heard Ellen’s re¬ 
assuring voice and saw her face for the first time 
in the lantern light at the far end of the group. 

“Ah, Mrs. Dietz, let them put the poor animal 
out of its pain,” she was saying in a loud whisper 
to the mother. “It can’t live.” 

Moira turned to Hal and took his arm. He had 
been smiling grimly at the scene, but as her hand 
fell upon his sleeve he covered it with his own. 
The horse, the drama of primitive sorrow, every¬ 
thing was forgotten, except her features and hair, 
and gipsy loveliness in the wavering light. 

“They’re Ellen’s children, these people,” she 
said. “She’s wonderful to them. She told me 
yesterday ‘that horse is like a member of their 
family, Miss Moira. It’ll be terrible when it dies.’ 
Isn’t she fine to come down here and comfort 
them?” 

They turned at the sound of foot-steps crossing 
the hard earth and stubble, and two stocky figures 
passed them. 

“Hullo,” said one, with a grin. It was Rob 
Blaydon, carrying in his hand something from 


BLINDFOLD 115 

which they caught a quick gleam as he passed. 
The veterinary was with him. Both went up to 
Hermann and held a hurried consultation, and 
during this the family fell silent. Presently the 
three men parted. Hermann spoke up in a high, 
quavering voice. 

44 Well, Momma, they say it’s jest got to be done. 
We jest got to give her up, and put her out of her 
misery. I don’t know where we’re a-goin’ to git 

another one like her. I don’t know—that I don’t. 

___ « 

Poor old Molly. She’s been with us now longer 
than my boy there, pretty near as long as Lilly 
here. It breaks me up to lose her. Yes, sir, it 
goes hard, but there ain’t no helping it.” 

44 That’s the way to look at it, Hermann,” said 
Bob, with gruff good nature. 

Hal raised his voice from where he stood with 
Moira at some distance. 

44 I’ll give you another horse, Dietz,” he said. 
Moira squeezed his arm. 

44 Thank you, thank you, Mr. Hal,” the farmer 
responded, obsequiously, peering for him in the 
weak light. 4 4 Now, Momma, ain ’t that fine! Well, 
children, I guess we better be movin’ in. Poor 
Molly—I’d rather not see you do it, gentlemen, 
if you don’t mind.” 

The family turned to obey, exhibiting a variety 
of expressions, from fright to the deepest woe, 
but Moira observed that there was one who had 
not shared the general grief—the short, mature, 


116 


BLINDFOLD 


straw-haired girl of sixteen or seventeen, whose 
face bore a stolid, disdainful look. She followed 
toward the kitchen after Ellen and one of the 
small children, but as she reached the porch she 
turned and gazed at Rob Blaydon, fascinated by 
the revolver in his hand. In the weird light, which 
cast a romantic glow over her figure and uncouth 
clothing, Moira thought the girl had a touch of 
beauty, fresh and coarse and natural as earth. 

“Poor Hermann,” she said, “he’s a rustic Pier¬ 
rot, Hal.” 

Just as they topped the ridge they heard the 
harsh double-fire of Rob Blaydon’s revolver. She 
was glad to see the lights of Thornhill. 

“Well,” said Hal, “Rob had a good hunch to-, 
night—even if it was fun for him. Just the sort 
of thing he’d love. There’s the boy who needed 
to go to France. As it is he’ll get over that raw 
streak very slowly.” 

“Rob’s a dear,” she broke in, earnestly. “I’m 
not one of those who worry about him. He’s a 
good animal—without a shred of theory in him. 
I let him get me most beautifully pickled twice 
last Fall.” 

“The devil you did!” exclaimed Hal. 

“Why not? He knows everybody everywhere 
and they like him. And he drives like a wild man 
—when he’s had a few. Now you wouldn’t be 
such a good fellow, would you, Hal? You’d be 


BLINDFOLD 117 

cautious and look after my morals, and count my 
drinks and take me home early/’ 

“Yes, Pm afraid I would,’’ he said. “And I 
suppose you wouldn’t like it.” 


XII 


It was Ellen’s night off and after the dis¬ 
patching of the horse, she stayed with Mrs. Dietz 
to cheer her up and help put the two youngest 
children to bed. She had been so long a constant 
visitor and benefactor that they had ceased to re¬ 
gard her as an emissary from the big house and 
talked of their troubles freely before her. 

The five of them sat about the lamp in the com¬ 
fortless but warm living room of the farmhouse, 
listening to a monologue by Hermann Dietz on the 
virtues of the dead horse. Although he had been 
born within a hundred feet of that spot, and his 
father had come to America as a boy, Dietz’ ac¬ 
cent, like many of his kind bred to the farms there¬ 
abouts, still bore traces of the German. They 
were a squatter-like tribe, never prosperous. 

*‘ Poor old Molly, she was not so old, yet, but it 
seemed like we had had her always, Mrs. Wil¬ 
liams. She did her share, Molly.” 

* ‘What did Mr. Robert do to Molly?” asked the 
boy, plaintively. “Did he shoot her? Can I go 
see?” 

“No, no, you wait until morning. Don’t you 
mind about Molly. She was sufferin’ terrible, and 

she’s better where she is. But we’ll miss her. 

118 


BLINDFOLD 


119 


Yes, Johnnie, when you was a little bit of a feller, 
two, three years old, Poppa used to put you on 
Molly’s back and hold you, and you’d laugh and 
holler and she’d walk so easy just as if she knew 
you was a baby.” 

“Things was different in them days,” piped his 
wife. “Them automobile horns, now. We didn’t 
never used to hear them. But nowadays it’s half 
the night, Mrs. Williams. I can’t get used to ’em. 
They keep me awake so.” 

“Ah, they wouldn’t be so bad,” put in the girl 
Lilly, “if we could ride in ’em now an’ then, the 
way others do. Johann Hunker’s got a m’chine.” 

“Ach, you are always bellerin’ about a 
m’chine,” her father burst out. “When you got 
one you got a hole to throw money in. Listen to 
them rich people even, talkin’ about how much 
they cost. What have I got to do with a m’chine? 
An’ whose goin’ to run it, your Momma? I ain’t 
goin’ to take no risks with ’em, not since I got 
that sunstroke last August anyways. I git so 
dizzy sometimes I think I can’t get home to the 
house.” 

“I could run it,” grumbled Lilly. 

“You now, Lilly! You’ve got plenty to do with¬ 
out that. You don’t tend to your work the way it 
is.” 

“She’s gettin’ so lazy she’s got no head to re¬ 
member anything,” put in her mother. “I don’t 
dare leave the children with her.” 


120 


BLINDFOLD 


‘‘M'chine!'' Dietz quavered on, “I ain't got no 
money for 'em if I wanted one." 

4 ‘You've got the money, I guess," said Mrs. 
Dietz querulously, “the same as Johann Hunker, 
if you wanted to spend it." 

“Now, Momma, I told you twenty times already 
I'm takin' care of your money. Who's goin' to 
keep it safe for a rainy day, if it ain't me?" 

“Well, we don’t see anything of it, Hermann, 
not since you got hold of it . . . sellin' off the 
farms, an' leavin' us with hardly a place to put 
foot to the ground." 

“Yes, Momma," rejoined her husband ear¬ 
nestly. “I did sell off the farms. But you know 
what Mr. McNutt said. He said if I didn't want 
to take that two hundred dollars an acre Mr. 
Blaydon offered, they'd all go somewheres else 
an' build, and our land never would git a high 
price. You couldn't git a hundred for it in them 
days." 

“There's some of them waited longer an' got 
more. Johann Hunker did." 

“Johann Hunker may be a slick feller, but if I 
hadn't sold when I did they mightn't have come 
here at all, an' then where would Johann Hunker 
be? Never you mind about that money. It's 
a-drawin' good interest." 

Dietz lifted his tall, bent form from his chair 
and shuffled over to the stove to dump his pipe. 


BLINDFOLD 


121 


Then he turned again to his wife, a sudden grin 
spreading over his cheeks. 

“Well, Momma, what about a little wine? See¬ 
ing Mrs. Williams is here, eh? A little home-made 
wine and coffee cake. We’ll give the childern 
some wine to-night, eh? Lilly, bring up the chairs 
to the table.” 

The girl rose languidly to obey and Mrs. Dietz 
departed for the bedroom, returning a moment 
later with a long bottle. Lilly brought glasses 
and placed them on the red-figured table cover. 

“Gret the coffee cake, Lilly,” her mother or¬ 
dered. 

Dietz toyed affectionately with the stem of his 
glass filled with bright red liquid. 

“Ach, the home-made wine—that is good! 
Well, it is like old times, Momma—when the older 
children, Lena and Fred was here, and Lilly was 
a little girl about Johnnie’s size. Yes, it was fine 
then. None of these rich people with big houses 
and all that. We was the bosses then.” 

“We had all the land,” put in Mrs. Dietz gloom¬ 
ily. “We could get enough off of it to sell a good 
crop every year and plenty of vegetables to the 
commission men, and you always had money, if 
you needed it for anything, like Molly dying. 
Now it’s in the bank and we can’t spend nothing. 
No, the land was better than the money.” 

“Mr. Blaydon, he gives me sixty dollars a 



122 


BLINDFOLD 


month, and all the feed for the stock, and half the 
money from the truck. That is something, sixty 
dollars sure every month.’’ 

“But you’ve got to work for Mr. Blaydon, and 
I do, and even the childern. It ain’t the same as 
when we worked for ourselves.” 

“Poppa,” broke in Lilly, as she cut the long 
flat sections of coffee cake, “Mary Hunker was 
selling some of Johann’s wine over at Corey’s last 
week. She got a big price, enough to buy a new 
dress. Can I sell some of Momma’s wine? We 
can’t ever drink up what we got every year.” 

“Ach Himmel!” Dietz cried, bringing his glass 
down with a rattle upon the table. “There is 
that girl. We have the land and sell that. We 
have the wine and we got to sell that too. Ain’t 
there nothing we can call our own? No, Lilly, 
you let the wine be.” 

“I never get clothes at all like the Hunker 
girls,” she replied sullenly. “I saw a green dress, 
a pretty one, over at town that was only thirteen 
dollars and fifty cents.” 

“But, Lilly, your sister Lena never bought no 
dresses for thirteen dollars and fifty cents. And 
Lena always looked nice. She married a man 
with a fine bakery business on Oak Street. He 
took Lena already because she was a neat, sensible 
girl and wouldn’t throw away his money for him. 
I don’t know what to think of you, Lilly. A hon¬ 
est, Christian girl, the way you’ve been brought 


BLINDFOLD 


123 


up. You ain’t like your sister, is she, Momma?” 

44 You wouldn’t expect all girls would be alike, 
Hermann,” said her mother. “Lilly is a good 
girl, but times have changed since Lena was her 
age. You give me the money, now, and I’ll go 
with her to look at the dress.” 

“Well, well, I guess so,” replied Hermann, mol¬ 
lified by his wife’s firmness. “That is a lot of 
money, but Lilly is a pretty girl, eh? I’ll give you 
the money to-morrow and maybe you can buy the 
dress before Sunday. Then them Hunker girls 
won’t be so fresh up at church.” 

“Pour some more wine for Mrs. Williams, 
Lilly,” said Mrs. Dietz. 

“No,” said Ellen, “I must be going.” 

“Yes, a night cap, Mrs. Williams,” said Dietz,, 
in his best manner. “A little more wine for all 
of us, and then we’ll go to bed. I got to get 
Meyer, if I can, or Ed Becker, to help me bury 
poor Molly to-morrow. You got to dig a big hole 
for a horse.” 

As Ellen left the cottage and started homeward 
she did not know whether to laugh or cry. It was 
always the same story, poverty and hard work, 
and the vanity of the young girl tempted as she 
had been most of her life by the strange, glamor¬ 
ous panorama of the rich at her very doorstep. 
And she had not the sense of pride the older folks 
had enjoyed, the knowledge of having been mas¬ 
ters of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Dietz’ remark 


124 


BLINDFOLD 


haunted her mind. “The land was better than 
the moneys ’ For such as these people, it was. It 
had given them all they had, all they could pos¬ 
sibly have, to live for. 

The shortest path up the hill to the Blaydon 
house was rocky and steep, and a third the way 
up Ellen stopped for breath and regretted she 
had not walked around the longer way. It was 
dark under the trees and hard to stick to the path. 
She sat down to remove a pebble from her low 
shoe. As she stood up again facing the foot of 
the hill, she could see a broad patch of Dietz 7 
field through an opening in the branches. At 
that moment a figure stepped out from the trees 
into the open space and came to a stop as if wait¬ 
ing. It was a man undoubtedly, she thought, but 
she was curious to make sure. So few prowlers 
ever disturbed the peace of the place. She crept 
down the path, holding on to the shrubs and tree- 
trunks and making as little noise as possible. 
She decided she would wait until the man moved 
on and go around by the road after all. Beaching 
the bottom she found herself within a few yards 
of Rob Blaydon. A moment later, nearer the al¬ 
ready dark and silent Dietz house, she saw an¬ 
other figure stirring. What could Bob be up to 
and who was his confederate? Then swiftly, Lilly 
darted from the shadow of the house and joined 
him. The two disappeared, exchanging whispers, 
around the side of the hill. 


BLINDFOLD 


125 


Ellen started impulsively, as though she would 
stop them, hut she did not go far. What could 
she do? She knew Rob Blaydon too well to think 
that he would take any interference from her or 
from any inferior. He was not a mean boy, but he 
was headstrong. He would tell her that he thought 
her a busybody and a nuisance. And supposing 
she went to Lilly? Lilly would be frightened and 
cowed for the moment. But Ellen realized, far 
more sharply than the girPs family, how deep her 
rebellion lay. In the end she would throw ad¬ 
vice to the winds. 

There was left the alternative of warning Ma¬ 
thilda or Sterling Blaydon. If she did so what 
could she prove? Rob was bold enough to make 
the thing appear in any light he desired, some 
boyish escapade in which he had inveigled the girl 
to join. To excite the Dietz family about the girPs 
danger was as useless. They could not control 
her in any case, and it might fire her to desperate 
measures. Ellen could do nothing that would re¬ 
sult in any good, nothing except create a scandal. 

She sat down and wondered if she cared. She 
certainly cared about the child’s welfare, but now 
that she felt it was impossible to prevent what 
was happening, she could reason about it calmly. 
Life was a dreadfully sad thing any way you took 
it. But could this love affair do the girl more 
harm than she was sure to meet with in any event 
—perhaps at the hands of worse men? Might it 


126 


BLINDFOLD 


* 

not come to mean something to her she would 
cherish despite its cost! Ellen’s only answer to 
these questions was her own experience. Perhaps 
it had been worth while. Her daughter was 
happy, with an unclouded future, and she was con¬ 
tented. Knowledge of herself had suddenly 
shaken her faith in the creed that one must in¬ 
evitably suffer pain because of sin. 


xin 


Fkom the house far above them came the indis¬ 
tinct sound of Mathilda at the piano. Was it 
“Reflets dans I’eau” she was playing! As the 
music stopped the chaotic noises of life took up 
their endless staccato rhythm—cows lowing in the 
pasture, a workman calling to another, the beat of 
a hammer in some farmhouse, the restless twitter 
and trilling of birds, the snapping and stirring of 
branches, a motorhorn sounding a thousand miles 
away, it seemed—the music of the universe that 
was flowing through her now in a full stream. 
Moira opened her book at random: 

‘‘Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see; 

Let the dew-fall drench either side of me; 

Clear apple leaves are soft upon that moon 

Seen side-wise like a blossom in the tree; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon . . . 

She stopped and looked off through the leaves 
to the wide fields where the sun lay. 

“Don’t you love it, Hal,” she said, “just the 
sound of it, the perverse beauty of it! Is there 
anything more wonderful!” 

Hal rolled over upon the flat of his back staring 

thoughtfully up from the shady chamber of green, 

127 


128 


BLINDFOLD 


the tiny grotto at the cliff-foot, up at the grey old 
overhanging boulders, like moles and maculations 
on the brow of an ancient crone, the massy 
tangle of branches and leaves bursting from 
among them and cutting off half his vision of the 
glittering blue heaven, wherein floated great 
flocks of clouds as artificial in their sheer white¬ 
ness and hard outlines as puff-balls on a pool. His 
muscular brown arms and neck were bare to the 
white bathing shirt. His bright blonde hair was 
tousled over his face, which was mature and 
strong. The girl’s voice made little ripples of 
pleasure run over his limbs; it gave the words a 
significance which would never have reached him 
without her— 

“The grass is thick and cool, it lets ns lie, 

Kissed upon either cheek and either eye. 

I turn to thee as some green afternoon 
Turns toward sunset and is loth to die; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon.” 

That certainly he could feel supremely, experi¬ 
ence in himself. He let his gaze rest upon her. 
The fine black hair, bobbed at last in spite of 
Aunt Mathilda’s anxious objections, made a quaint 
pattern on the face. Against it the glow of her 
skin and lips was the more brilliant by contrast, 
and beneath the white angle of brow, the eyes, 
looking suddenly at him from the page, were as 
clear, cool, vivid blue as violets in a snowbank. 


BLINDFOLD 


129 


There was in that face the necessary balance 
between strength and frailty, self-possession and 
emotion, at least, so he thought, the features not 
quite absolutely regular. He preferred that touch 
of oddness; it was the stamp of her will, her curi¬ 
ous insights, her traits of unusual justice. It miti¬ 
gated too much beauty. Greek models were all 
very well in statues, but in a woman one wanted 
a lively difference. . . . Moira’s book suddenly 
snapped shut, as though his slowly relished in¬ 
spection were too much for her. Her short laugh 
came like a chain of melody from her whole 
body. 

* 6 Poor Hal,” she cried, “aren’t you sorry you 
will have to listen to Swinburne all your life?” 

He reached out an Indian forearm and drew 
her to him. They were silent for a long time. 
Then she sat back, her eyes admiring the relaxed 
strength of his body. 

“God!” he muttered, “and I once thought be¬ 
cause we were cousins this could never happen—I 
should never be allowed to speak.” 

“Such a good little boy,” she said. “You 
would have waited to be allowed.” 

“It’s odd how I’ve never been able to think 
of you as Aunt’s daughter.” 

“Neither have I,” she replied. “But it is easy 
to explain. It takes a man—a father—about the 
house to establish parentage. Mother is a dilet¬ 
tante on her job, anyway. But I have some quali- 


130 


BLINDFOLD 


ties from her, I know. . . . What was father 
like ?’’ 

“I wasn’t exactly his playmate, you know!” he 
laughed. “I don’t remember him any more than 
you do. But he must have been a regular, from 
all I’ve heard. He was your father, all right.” 

“H’m. . . . Ned Seymour sounds like a man 
who might be my father. And names are wonder¬ 
ful—better than portraits—to read people by. I 
can’t tell much by father’s looks. Poor Daddy, 
Maman stood by him, I’m glad of that. She’s al¬ 
ways been a heretic among her own. But if Daddy 
was so ambitious, so indifferent to the world and 
all that, why didn’t he leave me a sign, why didn’t 
he leave glorious works ? He should have. ’ ’ 

“He left you,” laughed Hal. 

‘ ‘ The work of an idle moment. ’ ’ 

“Aren’t they the best? But I rather like that 
about your father, the fact that he was a spectator 
rather than a spouter. So many darned people 
aren’t content with their limitations. They have 
to puddle about with paint and ink.” 

“As I do.” 

“It’s yours by right, I suppose. At least, you 
really like it.” 

“I have invented a litany, Hal. Will you listen 
to it? I invented it for the saddest people in the 
world. It goes like this: 0 God, be merciful to 
those who are free and must live with the fettered; 
to the scornful laughers who are bound to the hu- 


BLINDFOLD 


131 


mourless; to the swift who walk by the slow; and 
the idle who are bondsmen to the busy—and es¬ 
pecially, 0 God, be merciful to all those whose 
spirits were young and whose generation denied 
them youth’s chance, amen. There must have 
been many like Daddy in his day.” 

Through the trees the half moon glowed like the 
polished end of a woman’s nail against a pink and 
sapphire West. It was an infinitely tender mo¬ 
ment, the end of a week of betrothal, the eve of 
his departure for a trip North. 

“Let me, please, once more,” whispered Moira, 
“one I love.” And she quoted: 

“La lune blanche 
Luit dans les bois, 

De chaque branch© 

Parte une voix, 

Sous la ramee, 

Oh, bien-aiinee. 

“Une vaste et tendre 
Apaisement 
Semble descendre 
Du firmament 
Que l’astre irise . . . 

C’est l’heure exquise!” 

“You gave me those,” she said. “They were 
a peace offering one Christmas, one year you had 
treated me very badly. I love them because they 


132 BLINDFOLD 

are all young, all fresh, ageless. Let’s you and I, 
dear, resolve to be young forever. Let’s make a 
bond of youth, cherish it, study to keep it, never 
let it go.” 

“Moira, you will never be older than this day.” 

“I think it is easy to stay young if one keeps 
one’s unreasonable likes. One should always like 
things that are a little twisted and strange, in 
spite of what people think. One must like Ver¬ 
laine’s absinthe as well as Verlaine, Swinburne 
and Swinburne’s perversity also, Rob and his 
wickedness—the wickedness he doesn’t under¬ 
stand. You know, Hal, I didn’t go to college after 
all, because I was afraid it would make me old, it 
would give me 4 interests.’ I hate the word. As 
if everything wasn’t an interest!” 

They walked around by the flat, broad meadow, 
hushed in the dusk. The first whip-poor-will was 
calling. She clung to his arm, enjoying the sensa¬ 
tion of firm muscles flexing under her hand. 

“I don’t care,” she cried. “I’m not afraid of 
anything. I would as soon give myself to you, all 
of me, now, to-night. The rest, all the fuss, does 
not count. What is there to fear in this glorious 
wide world, Hal!” 

“Nothing—but fear, I suppose,” he replied. 

Two white figures swaying together across the 
dusty furrows, they merged into the darkness like 
birds fluttering out of sight in the clouds. 


XIV 


Moira had considered Mathilda not at all in the 
swift, sudden, almost cyclonic romance with Hal 
Blaydon, no more indeed than in any of her flirta¬ 
tions. There had been many others, of all ages, 
from her own up to fifty, and she had vaguely real¬ 
ized that when her choice was made, if she made 
a choice, her mother would have to he counted in. 
At times during the past week of incredible magic, 
she had feared the possibility of a clash between 
them, owing to the good Episcopalian views, to 
which Mathilda still clung, despite the advanced 
and advancing habits of thought that surrounded 
her. But the logic with which the girl faced this 
possibility was serene: harmony had always pre¬ 
vailed between them, too much harmony perhaps, 
and some conflict was inevitable sooner or later. 
It had better occur over this biggest and most 
important choice of her youth. , 

She had begun to wonder, of late, just how she 
felt toward her mother. Certainly she was very 
fond of her, but it seemed hardly a filial fondness. 
She admired Mathilda’s little fantasticalities; it 
was clear that she had in her time been something 
of an idol-breaker; but it was equally clear that 
her cherished image of herself as a person of 

133 


134 BLINDFOLD 

great independence of mind was somewhat out¬ 
worn. The daughter had gone far beyond the 
older woman, or so she thought, and there lurked 
small matters on which they concealed their opin¬ 
ions from each other. Moreover, Moira had loved 
her most for the brightness and charm of her 
manner and these were becoming clouded by a 
new development that touched her closely—a 
secret in her brother’s life. Mathilda had dis¬ 
covered the truth with amazement, but to all ap¬ 
pearances had reconciled herself to it. So long, 
she argued, as the apartment he kept in town 
remained only a rendezvous for discreet meetings, 
she did not greatly care. But more and more this 
other establishment was taking Blaydon away 
from them. Could her brother possibly bring 
himself to marry the woman—not now perhaps— 
but when age had weakened his resistance and laid 
him open to appeals to sentiment and protection? 
He was already far from a young man. ... It 
was a situation that had a profound effect upon 
her accustomed poise, because it was one which 
she could not influence nor even speak of in his 
presence. 

After Hal had left on his trip that night, Moira 
put up her car—she had driven him to the station 
herself—and walked into the library. She found 
Mathilda embroidering, a pastime in which she 
was skilful, and took a frank pride. It was her 
substitute for artistic expression, as she said, a 


BLINDFOLD 


135 


gift she had always honestly envied. Everybody 
they knew, Moira thought, longed for artistic ex¬ 
pression—and Hal had been right to scorn it. 
There were Mary Cawthorn and Tempe Riddle— 
as soon as people like that had taken up writing 
verse, she herself had dropped it. She had turned 
exclusively to her painting. That, at least, you 
couldn’t do at all, without some foreground, some 
knowledge and practice. She was happy that 
her youth had been industrious enough to bring • 
her a measure of these. And she did not take it 
seriously. 

“Well,” said Mathilda, “you’ve seen your 
darling off?” 

The girl did not attempt to conceal her surprise. 
Then she laughed. 

“I suppose nobody could really have failed 
to know, who had been around the house these 
last few days. Still, we thought we were so 
clever. ’ ’ 

“There’s such a thing as being too clever. 
When you and Hal began to be stiff toward each 
other, I knew what was happening.” 

“We must have been a fine pair of actors,” 

“But I’ve seen it coming all along. Before 
either of you did, I believe.” 

Moira flopped upon the cricket at her mother’s 
feet, and looked into her face affectionately. 

“And that means, darling, that you don’t ob¬ 
ject?” 


136 


BLINDFOLD 


Mathilda ran her slim hand through the short, 
dark curls leaning against her knee. 

“Of course not, my child. It’s the most perfect 
thing that could have happened. ’ ’ 

“Mother,” asked the girl, looking up at her 
whimsically, “when are we ever going to quarrel, 
you and I?” 

“Never, I hope.” 

“Isn’t it rather unhealthy never to quarrel? 
Hal and I do, frequently, and I’m glad of it.” 

“You won’t think that way when you are my 
age.” 

“Maman, are you very miserable about Uncle 
Sterling?” 

Mathilda’s reply was preceded by a short pause 
and a quick glance. 

“How did you know that?” she asked. 

“I have ears and eyes—and can put things to¬ 
gether, you know,” laughed Moira. Then she 
added, more gravely, “I really don’t think many 
people know. When Selden hinted about it I de¬ 
nied the story flatly—for his benefit.” 

“Why deny the truth?” It was one of Ma¬ 
thilda’s traits to be able to say things the implica¬ 
tions of which were unpleasant to her. 

“Oh, one must to busybodies. Only I do wish 
you wouldn’t be unhappy about it.” 

“I’m not,” said the other, “so long as matters 
remain as they are.” 


BLINDFOLD 


137 


“I see what you mean, dear. People who have 
professionally renounced marriage ought to have 
some pride. They ought to observe the ethics of 
their profession.” 

Mathilda smiled. 

“Dm afraid my attitude is not so impersonal. 
Isn’t that somewhere in Shaw?” 

“It must be,” replied the girl. “But I’m quite 
thrilled over the whole thing. Please forgive me 
for saying so. To think of Uncle Sterling being 
so delightfully biblical!” 

She went to the table and brought the cigarettes. 
The older woman took one from her and laid 
aside her embroidery. “You’ll do something for 
me, you two?” she asked. 

“What?” 

“Get married as soon as possible.” 

“Oh, my dear! I’m only nineteen.” 

“Do you think you would ever change?” 

“No, I don’t think that.” 

“Then why not marry? I can’t understand the 
modern idea of waiting until life is over to marry. 
It’s good for people to have their youth together 
—when they can.” 

“Well, Hal has done all the planning, and I 
think it is very sensible. In the first place, he’s 
going on with his chemistry. He doesn’t want to 
go into the brokerage office, and you mustn’t tell 
Uncle yet.” 


138 


BLINDFOLD 


“I approve of that. Brokerage will do for 
Robert.” 

“It means two more years for him at college. 
The first of them I shall spend in New York study¬ 
ing. The next I want to spend in Paris, and I 
want you to come with me, dear. How about it? 
And then—married in Paris, and the Sorbonne 
or some German University for Hal. Isn’t that 
a glorious programme? He really didn’t plan all 
of it.” 

“No, I imagine not,” laughed Mathilda. “He 
.would probably have planned it as I would, by be¬ 
ginning with the end. But I shan’t oppose you. 
I’ve never opposed you much, Moira, not even 
when I might have done so with justice. And the 
reason is that I have always wanted to live to see 
one completely happy person. I hope you are 
going to be the one.” 

Mathilda concluded with a wistful note. 

“Darling,” cried the girl. “How good you 
have been to me. And I wonder if I am going to 
be completely happy. I’ll try, and I shan’t be 
ashamed or modest about it, either. Is that— 
egotistical?” 

A few minutes later as she passed Hal Blay- 
don’s door on the way to her own, she could not 
resist the temptation to go in. She had never 
done that before deliberately, and she felt a little 
like an intruder. She had a great distaste for 


BLINDFOLD 


139 


the practice of assuming privileges with those one 
eared for, hut she knew he would be pleased if he 
saw her patting his bed affectionately and looking 
around at his belongings. As she stopped in front 
of the untidy book shelves, she smiled at their in¬ 
congruous juxtaposition of textbooks, modern 
novels and classic survivals of adolescence —‘ 1 This 
Side of Paradise’’ between a Latin grammar and 
a Dictionary of Physics; “Cytherea,” which re¬ 
minded her just then of many men she knew, 
alongside of “Plutarch’s Lives.” She reflected 
that she would probably not sleep very early to¬ 
night and had no fresh reading in her bedroom. 
She quickly pulled out a volume and went to her 
room. 

With her clothes off and three pillows behind 
her back, and a cigarette between her lips, she 
picked up the book she had borrowed. There had 
been a certain degree of method in her selection. 
It was an old, loose-backed, green-covered copy 
of “Les Miserables,” one of her long and growing 
list of “duty books,” that is to say, books she 
ought to have read years ago and had not. This 
happened also to belong to the classification of 
“school-piece” books. An English reader had 
contained a selection from it, and she had once re¬ 
solved, in a fit of rebellion against the academic, 
never to read any books that yielded school pieces 
for the boredom of the young. Later the con- 


140 


BLINDFOLD 


science of a cultivated adult had forced her to re¬ 
cant, and her index librorum 'prohibitovum had 
become an index obligatory. 

The book in her hand was a long one. She 
would just about finish it by the time Hal came 
back, and that would be killing two birds with one 
stone. 

She opened it at random and as she removed 
her thumbs the pages leaped back to a marked 
place, occupied by a letter. She picked it up. It 
was an old and faded letter, addressed to 1 ‘ Mrs. 
Ellen Williams, 21 Trezevant Place.’’ That was 
Ellen, the cook, of course. She smiled a little at 
the thought of Ellen reading a monstrous book 
like this. She had never seen Ellen read any¬ 
thing except a recipe or a label. But, of course, 
humble people did like Hugo. She had read 
tl Notre Dame” and “Ninety-Three.” 

Moira would have put the letter aside at once 
to hand it to the servant in the morning had she 
not noticed two markings on the envelope that 
strangely interested her. One was the date, just 
a month after she was born. The other was the 
inscription on the flap in back, which read as fol¬ 
lows : 


from Miss Moira McCoy, 
Lutheran Maternity Hospital, 
2243 Bismarck Street. 


BLINDFOLD 


141 


Her own name, on a letter almost as old as she 
was! She laid it down. She ought not to read it, 
of course. But it certainly was hard to resist 
knowing what some little Irish girl in the hospital 
(who made her capital “m’s” with three vertical 
lines and a horizontal bar across the top) was 
thinking and doing a month after she was born. 
Wasn’t there a “statute of limitations” on let¬ 
ters? No letter nearly twenty years old could be 
private. The lure of romance that lurked in the 
envelope was too strong. She hastily drew out 
the folded sheet and read: 

My Dear Mrs. Williams : 

Just a note to tell you how honoured and 
tickled I am that you are going to name your 
little daughter after me. 

I hope to see her some time soon, and you 
also. I am so busy now, but in two or three 
weeks I could call on my day off, Thursday, if 
it could be arranged. 

So you love your new place? I’m so glad. 
We all miss you and—my pretty little name¬ 
sake. How proud it makes me. 

Sincerely your friend, 

Moira McCoy. 

She had never heard of Ellen’s having a baby,, 
and if she had just been naming it when this letter 


142 


BLINDFOLD 


was written it should have been about the same 
age as herself. How curious it was that she and 
Ellen’s baby should have had the same name. 
Perhaps her mother had liked the name and bor¬ 
rowed it from Ellen, for Mathilda would take what 
she wanted; but it did seem unlikely she would 
take the name of the cook’s baby for her own. 
And what had become of Ellen’s Moira? She 
would ask Ellen about it in the morning. Never 
had her curiosity been so oddly and intensely 
aroused. 

She cast the letter from her and opened Hugo, 
but her eyes were heavy and her mind weary with 
the thoughts and excitements of that day. In a 
few moments she was asleep. 

When she awoke in the morning the first thing 
she thought of was the letter, and she reread it. 
The mystery had clearly taken a strong hold upon 
her mind. While dressing she decided to post¬ 
pone seeing Ellen, and every time she went to her 
room during the day she read the letter again 
and asked herself more and more puzzling ques¬ 
tions about it. Why, for example, had Ellen never 
spoken of her child, particularly if it had the 
same name as herself? Was there something dis¬ 
tasteful in the recollection either to Ellen or to 
her mistress? * 

Moira could not get into the Hugo book at all. 
Instead she took a long drive in her car and, find¬ 
ing that a bore, she tried riding which proved no 


BLINDFOLD 


143 


better. She was tempted to hunt up Rob or tele¬ 
phone for Selden and go somewhere for a cock¬ 
tail and a dance. Failing to reach either of them 
or to decide on anything definite to do, she began 
to find Ellen a source of enormous interest. 
Hardly realizing it, she spied upon her all after¬ 
noon, and searched her smiling, unconcerned fea¬ 
tures whenever she appeared. It was hard to 
think of Ellen ever having had a baby. She 
stopped herself from pursuing this obsession a 
half a dozen times, but the spell of curiosity lin¬ 
gered. And still she could not bring herself to 
speak to the woman. By nightfall she was scat¬ 
tered and depressed, with the feeling of having 
spent a wasted day. 

She went to bed early and tried again to read 
Hugo, but instead, she found herself rereading 
the McCoy letter. It drew her like a sinister 
charm. She threw on a dressing gown and began 
walking in the room. For the first time in her 
whole life her fingers shook as she started to take 
a cigarette from her box, and actually muffed it. 
This made her angry, and she lit the cigarette 
swiftly and fiercely and clattered the box down on 
the table. Then she was able to laugh and up¬ 
braid herself. 

“Good Lord!” she cried. “What has the cook 
and her offspring to do with me? Why am I so 
excited?” 

But even as the words died on her lips her re- 


144 


BLINDFOLD 


assurance departed. She would never get control 
of herself until she investigated. Why hadn’t she 
talked to Ellen that day and got this foolish 
curiosity off her mind? The woman would think 
it strange if she called on her at this late hour to 
return a twenty-year-old letter, even though it 
contained sacred memories. Yet why should Ellen 
think that ? She would simply slip down and hand 
her the letter with some gay nonsense about it 
being better twenty years late than never, and if 
Ellen wasn’t tired and seemed talkative she would 
ask her about the coincidence of names. It was 
certainly no new thing in that house for Moira to 
do whimsical and unexpected things. She could 
come back and sleep and dream of her blessed 
Hal—poor Hal, he had hardly had a thought from 
her all day. 

The regular servants’ rooms were at the top of 
the house, but Ellen lived alone in the little wing 
off the kitchen. She had chosen this ground floor 
room because it was closer to the affairs that di¬ 
rectly concerned her, outside and in, and because 
she was a privileged person, the dean of the serv¬ 
ants. Moira’s visit then would disturb nobody. 
She drew her pretty gown about her and walked 
boldly downstairs, knocked, made a laughing re¬ 
quest to be admitted and waited for the startled 
woman to put something around her and unlock 
the door. 

“Is this your letter, Ellen?” she asked. “I 


BLINDFOLD 145 

found it last night and meant to give it to you to¬ 
day, but forgot it. I thought you'd be so glad to 
get it back, I'd just come down and give it to you 
before I went to sleep. You see ... I read it— 
the date was so near my birthday. ’' 

Ellen opened the letter and read it through with 
apparent awkwardness and difficulty. 

“Why, Miss Moira, where did you get this? 
It's been lost for years. I didn't know it was in 
existence." 

“I found it in a book upstairs." 

“My land! How; did it get there, I won¬ 
der?" 

“It was an old volume of Hugo's—‘Les 
Miserables.' " 

The girl winced a little as Ellen repeated the 
name after her and mispronounced it schoolboy 
fashion. 

“Oh, yes, yes, I remember. That’s so many 
years ago. To think this letter has been there all 
that time!'' 

“I didn't know you had ever had a baby, Ellen. 
Tell me about it. Are you too sleepy?" 

“No, I'm not sleepy, Miss Moira—" Ellen’s 
politeness prompted the words, yet the girl caught 
a hint that she would have liked to end the conver¬ 
sation. “You—you startled me so," she went on. 
“But—there isn't anything to tell." 

“Did she die?" 

“Yes, Miss Moira." 


146 


BLINDFOLD 


The fidgety excitement which seized the grey¬ 
haired woman was understandable on the ground 
of old memories being suddenly aroused. Moira’s 
voice expressed the tenderest sympathy. 

4 4 How sad. She would have been such a com¬ 
fort to you now. ,, 

44 Yes. But that’s all so long ago, ma’am. It’s 
the way things happen in this world for some of 
us.” 

44 And your husband! Is he dead, too!” 

The questioning was becoming more and more 
difficult for Ellen. When she answered it was 
with a touch of impatience. 

44 I don’t know. I don’t know where he is.” 

4 4 He deserted you!” 

44 Yes.” 

Moira felt the need of some apology, induced 
by Ellen’s uneasiness, but the very fact that the 
information was unsatisfactory made her per¬ 
versely eager to stay, although the little room 
oppressed her. 

44 I suppose you think I’m awfully curious, El¬ 
len,” she said, with a short laugh. 4 4 And very in¬ 
considerate to come and talk to you about these 
things at this time of night. But it seems so 
strange that you’ve been here ever since I can 
remember, and I’ve never heard about them—I 
suppose I thought you didn’t have an early life. 
You’re so cheerful, one doesn’t imagine you’ve 
had sorrows.” 


BLINDFOLD 147 

“People forget, ma'am. You can't stay sad 
always." 

4 'Isn't it funny," Moira broke in, "that I've 
got the same name your daughter had!" 

"Ye-es—I guess it is." 

Ellen's forced laugh and strained expression, 
and the tongue-tied moment that followed, were 
as hard for Moira as for the speaker. The 
silence lengthened. The older woman twisted 
in her uncomfortable sqet on the bed. She ob¬ 
viously did not want to be looked at nor to look 
at the girl. Why, thought Moira, should she 
make all this fuss over old memories! What 
harm was in them! Ellen was not naturally shy 
—she could be voluble enough at times, and quite 
intelligent. 

"And we were just about the same age, weren't 
we!" 

"No, oh, no," burst out the other, and stopped 
suddenly. 

"But the letter is dated so near my birthday," 
said Moira, a little brusquely, "and speaks of your 
baby's christening. We'd have to be." 

"Bu-but—my little girl was christened very 
late." 

"She was christened about the time I was, by 
the same name, and in the same house! Why, it's 
really a romantic idea, isn't it!" 

"Yes," said Ellen, "that was how it was. Your 
—your mother liked the name too." 


148 


BLINDFOLD 


Moira felt a wave of compassion for the lonely 
old woman. There seemed to he nothing left to 
do but to go. She rose as if to do so, and then 
that impulse of sympathy caused her to sit down 
beside the other on the bed. She spoke very 
gently. 

‘ i Ellen, Pm sorry, I’ve been opening an old 
wound, haven’t I? I can see that it hurts you. 
You understand why I am so interested—because 
of the name? That’s natural, isn’t it? But I’m 
glad to have learned about it. I shall think of you 
so differently from now on.” 

“Yes, Miss Moira, thank you.” The girl’s 
closeness to her and sympathy made Ellen’s voice 
tremble. She looked down at the letter which she 
had been rolling and twisting in her fingers, and 
following her glance, Moira realized that her own 
curiosity was not appeased at all. The mystery 
was as much a mystery as ever. 

“Why, you’re destroying your letter,” she said 
with a laugh, and took it from her and straight¬ 
ened it out. “You must have been fond of Miss 
McCoy,” she added gently. “Was she your 
friend?” 

“Yes.” 

“Was she sick, in the hospital?” 

“No, she—she was a nurse.” 

“Oh, of course. She speaks of being so busy 
and of missing you. And you had your baby 
there ?’’ 



BLINDFOLD 


149 


“Yes.” 

“That old hospital is still there, Ellen. I’ve 
driven by it a dozen times going to town. It 
doesn’t look like a very cheerful place to have a 
baby, but I guess it was nicer in those days.” 

“It was all right,” said Ellen. Moira impul¬ 
sively reached an arm about her waist. 

“Well, I’m going now. You don’t want to talk 
any more about it, do you, dear? I’ll ask mother 
to tell me the story. Can I—can I keep this let¬ 
ter, just to show her? I’ll tell her the odd way I 
came across it.” 

Ellen’s hand flew in terror to the crumpled let¬ 
ter. 

“No—no, please, Miss Moira. Give it to me,” 
she begged. 

The violence of her action, its commanding tone, 
brought a flush of anger to Moira’s face. She re¬ 
linquished the letter. 

“Oh,” she said, in a changed voice. “I sup¬ 
pose I should apologize—that is, no doubt you are 
angry that I read it.” 

“Yes, you shouldn’t have done that.” 

The servant spoke for the first time naturally, 
sincerely and vigorously, and by contrast it made 
all her previous answers seem to Moira like a 
patch-work of unreality and ejmbarrassed eva¬ 
sion. Moreover, the accusing tone of the remark 
added fuel to her resentment. She arose and 
drew her dressing gown about her with a gesture 


150 


BLINDFOLD 


of dignity. This time she certainly must go. And 
yet she was hurt and offended. Her only intent 
had been one of genuine interest and sympathy, 
and it had been badly received. As she stood in 
the floor in this puzzled, dissatisfied state, she 
caught sight of Ellen’s face appealing to her pa¬ 
thetically. 

“Please, Miss Moira,’’ the woman whispered 
hoarsely, “don’t tell Mrs. Seymour, don’t tell her 
about this letter, or that you were here, or any¬ 
thing. ’ ’ 

The girl answered with an abrupt gesture of 
impatience. 

“Ellen, I don’t understand. What is all this 
secrecy, this mystery for? I found your letter, I 
came to give it back to you and asked a simple 
question—and you treat me as though I had done 
something criminal. It’s foolish. I don’t see why 
I shouldn’t ask mother.” 

A blank panic seemed to have seized Ellen. She 
snatched the girl’s hand and went on in the same 
hoarse voice: 

“I can’t explain, but only don’t, don’t say any¬ 
thing to her. For her sake, for everybody’s sake, 
please!” 

Moira experienced a momentary insane illumi¬ 
nation. It made her heart stop and then flutter 
and then stop again. Twice in her life she had 
felt herself near death—once in an accident with 
her car, and once when her horse had thrown her. 


BLINDFOLD 151 

She felt now the same sensation she had felt then. 
The questions that came to her lips would have 
seemed to her idiotic a moment before. Yet they 
came irresistibly. 

“Ellen,’’ she cried, “what does all this mean? 
Have I got anything to do with it?” 

“You? Oh, no, no,” cried Ellen. “No, you 
mustn’t think that!” 

“Was that baby me?” 

“Oh, Miss Moira, how can you—how can you 
dream—?” 

“Are you my mother, Ellen? Tell me the truth. 
I’ll never leave here until I hear the truth. I’ll 
search this room, every inch of it.” 

But she did not need her answer in words. El¬ 
len’s strength was gone. Her mouth gibbered and 
her face ran tears. The girl sat down heavily, as 
though she were facing a job that had to be got 
over with. She never doubted the truth after that 
first glimpse of it, never tried to find a loophole. 
There were simply details to be heard, the future 
to be considered. She must get the whole story 
from Ellen, talk it over, make some decision. It 
would be half the night before she was through 
with it, and she hated it. . . . 

The sun had, in fact, appeared when she 
emerged from the little room, with a strange tale 
in her possession, pieced together from the inco¬ 
herent reminiscences of Ellen. She had forgiven 
Mrs. Seymour, forgiven her real mother, forgiven 


152 


BLINDFOLD 


all of them for the deception. It was only herself 
that she could not forgive, herself, humiliated by 
the degrading masquerade of twenty years. 

The knowledge that gave her most courage was 
her illegitimacy—which was clear from Ellen’s 
reticence. Better that a thousand times, better a 
complete outcast, than a respectable nobody. She 
would go, of course, go in secret, that day. She 
could take the fewest possible things, put them in 
her car when no one was looking, and drive to 
town. What money she needed to get established 
elsewhere she would have to take from her own 
account at the bank, as a loan. Ellen had been 
sworn to say nothing of the discovery. 

She stood at her window watching the first sun 
gild the tops of the knolls, drive the low-lying 
mists slowly before it. This great knee of a hill, 
this Penthesilea’s knee, had been a mother’s knee 
to her, more truly than any human one. There 
were no relationships in Nature, and this, the 
memory of her youth, could not be taken from 
her. . . . But it would be long before she would 
see the morning rise from that window again, and 
she lingered over it; not sentimentally. Why 
couldn’t she feel sad! Why was she so hard—! 
why had she been so cruel to Ellen? She could 
hear her now pleading that she had given up 
Moira for her good, pleading the advantages that 
had come to them by the sacrifice. Empty advan¬ 
tages, thought their possessor, immorally got and 


BLINDFOLD 


153 


useless to her now, just so many more things to 
bid good-bye to. The only thing that counted was 
Hal; if she was bitter it was because she feared 
yielding to that. Fate had thrown her to Hal 
and snatched her away in the moment of realiza¬ 
tion. . . . 

She turned from the full day flooding the 
window and went to her desk. She wanted to write 
to him now, while she was strongest. 

Dear [she wrote]: I know what you 
would say. You would say that it made no 
difference, and it would not now. But some 
day it would, it would grow upon us and 
smother us. It would be ‘my past/ and the 
time would come when your pride might make 
you hate me, for I would hate myself. I can 
face this now. I don’t know whether I could 
face it later. I must go away and do some¬ 
thing to absolve myself in my own eyes. And 
you must not interfere—you cannot. It will 
be years before I can see you again. I shall 
never forget these short days, too precious to 
describe. It is almost enough, that memory, 
without anything more. Good-bye. 

She could write no more, explain no more, 
though she wanted to. She suddenly reflected on 
the injustice of having to carry all the responsi¬ 
bility herself. She would have to repulse every 


154 BLINDFOLD 

advance, however much she might long to accept 
it. 

She laid down her pen—a gold one that matched 
the other little tools on her writing table—with a 
gesture that signified she was laying down every¬ 
thing else in the room, the thousand things she 
had used and loved, the horses, the trees, the long, 
dear roads, the very air of Thornhill. 






XV 


The only things she saw at first were as dreary 
and tragic as herself. It began the moment she 
left Thornhill, with her last vision of Ellen’s 
agonizing, tear-stained face hiding at her window 
on the circular drive. Then came the ride alone, 
through hot rows of dusty, dull brick houses; the 
terror-inspiring sight of lives straitened and stag¬ 
nant through poverty; the abysmal reek of the 
neighbourhood, near a glue factory, where she left 
her car in the garage, with instructions to return 
it on the morrow, and engaged an express man to 
take her trunk; the long file of weary, hopeful 
people with little green bills in their hands at the 
bank—worshippers in the modem temple; the im¬ 
migrants at Union Station, sprawling on the cir¬ 
cular benches about the pillars, hemmed in by 
their squalid baggage and children; the herding 
of exhausted, stupid families from the country 
trains to the street-cars and from the street-cars 
to the trains; the smoke-patined inferno of the 
city sweating in the heat after the clean beauty of 
her home. . . . 

She had been unable to get away in time to buy 
a berth in the fast train. In order to leave that 
day, which was imperative, she was forced to take 

155 


BLINDFOLD 


156 

the “two-day’ , train, and tried to console herself 
with the thought that its second-rateness would 
more effectually cover her flight. But the endless 
trip in coaches that contained unprepossessing 
persons from the lower social chaos added to the 
weight that lay on her spirit. 

The first night on the train she slept early and 
long, fatigued by a day full of tasks, but the sec¬ 
ond she lay staring at the polished red back of the 
berth above, her shade drawn up, her smarting 
eyes conscious of the jabbing flashes of light as 
they passed through sleeping towns, or straining 
out over dark, shuddering mysteries of coun¬ 
try; planning, wondering, trying to anticipate 
what life would be like one year, two years, five 
years from to-night. Where should she be; whom 
should she know? Should she be alive? Yes, she 
promised herself, she would be that. The one 
thing she could not admit was that life might end 
before she had fought it out. 

Once she asked herself what Mathilda was do¬ 
ing, for by this time her flight was an old story, 
the worst of the scene between Ellen and Mathilda 
was over. But they would be dreadfully unhappy 
nevertheless, and the pity she could spare to them 
softened her own sense of wrong. She flashed on 
the electric light in the berth and looked at her 
watch. In six hours, had it not been for Victor 
Hugo, for a little scrawled note written a fifth of 
a century ago, she would have been meeting Hal 


BLINDFOLD 


157 


Blaydon at the Blythedale platform. And who 
could say—if she had married Hal and learned the 
truth afterward—would it have made any dif¬ 
ference after all? 

It was morning when they got beyond Pitts¬ 
burgh and, sleepless and discouraged, the grey 
day greeted her dismally. All she was able to see 
beyond the window were little grimy houses be¬ 
longing to coal miners—they painted them a deep 
red or black in those parts, she supposed because 
all life was accursed. For long distances nothing 
caught her eye but these colours of Hell bor¬ 
rowed for earthly use. On a high slope, dingy 
with slag and coal screenings and dust, there was 
a black, sorry-looking house, where two children 
were swinging across the cheap frame porch far 
above the train. They were singing, and it struck 
her as the oddest thing she had ever witnessed. 
There were many houses like it on that coal bank. 
Where there wasn’t coal there was yellow mud. 
Where there were not either there were piles of 
rusty iron. She might come to this herself, to 
ugliness and hunger. She shuddered and dark¬ 
ened the berth, hiding her face from the vision as 
though it would sear her beauty and put an end to 
her youth. Hardly a moment later, it seemed, the 
porter awakened her from a deep sleep. They 
w T ere in the Pennsylvania station. 

Moira’s mood changed the moment she stood in 
the rotunda. The powerful magic of the city 


158 


BLINDFOLD 


stirred her. Had it been raining as only it can 
rain in New York, had the streets been ice-bound 
or blistering in mid-summer heat, she would have 
felt that great surge unabated. 

But to-day the city was in one of its magnificent 
sunny moods, laughing at its own comic and grac- 
ile charms, whimsical with unreliable winds, one 
of those startling, extravagant days when a walk 
in any street has the effect of champagne. On a 
sudden impulse she ordered the cab to the Bitz. 
She would enjoy one day, one supreme spell of in¬ 
difference and the sense of power, one hour at 
court when the regal town must treat her with its 
finest smiles and courtesies. She wrote boldly on 
the register “Mary Smith/’ and the simple dig¬ 
nity of the name made it distinguished in that 
long list of high-sounding titles. 

She breakfasted in state in her bedroom, look¬ 
ing over Park Avenue toward the great railroad 
terminus, the innumerable roofs, which stretched 
like irregular stepping stones to the river, the 
gracious bridge uptown. She drove in a barouche 
to the Metropolitan Museum and then down the 
Avenue, scenting its fine airs, and lingering on its 
elegant details in the slow-moving vehicle; the 
gay pile of the Plaza, like a monument erected to 
an Empress’ holiday; the pearly home of the 
Vander-somethings, with its birdlike little statue 
of the architect in a Rembrandt cap, perched 
among the decor of its roof; the quaintly painted 


BLINDFOLD 


159 


florist’s building in the forties; broad, gleaming 
windows wherein the comfort of grizzled million¬ 
aires was framed for the public’s delectation; the 
sleek cathedrals, English and Roman, agreeably 
sunning themselves—almost tete-a-tete, with an 
air of after-dinner ease; the occasional brown, old- 
fashioned banks, which one took at first glance to 
be dwellings; the Library, squat with sedentary 
scholarship and stained by too much knowledge 
of good and evil; the mosque-like corner of the 
Waldorf; and far down where the Avenue nar¬ 
rowed, pleasant-memoried houses of the older 
time, and a freshly be-painted little French hotel, 
bright and impudent as a hat box from the Rue 
de La Paix. 

This last looked so suitable to her state of high 
spirits that she called to the driver to stop there. 
Strangely enough she had never been in the Bre- 
voort. She slipped down into the basement cafe 
and was soon looking at the multiplied images of 
people in the mirrors that panelled the walls; 
among them stocky, dapper bachelors, arty, 
bearded men, a tall tan young fellow in a Norfolk, 
seemingly much fascinated with his companion, a 
much older woman with a weathered elegant face. 
She liked these. This, she supposed, had some¬ 
thing to do with Greenwich Village, though except 
through picture and story, she knew nothing of 
it. But as she poured her tea for herself, she felt 
suddenly it was not the place to be alone. How 


160 


BLINDFOLD 


easy it would be to go upstairs now, to send a 
telegram to Hal. The unholy notion made her 
finish her luncheon and leave. 

She went back by bus and walked about through 
half a dozen shops, then to a round of galleries, 
and finally, tired out, to the hotel. The thrill was 
over as she watched the day die on the housetops 
of the East Side, and she almost wished she did 
not have to spend the night there. She wanted to 
be at work, after all, the sooner the better; noth¬ 
ing else could save her from boredom and despair. 
To-morrow she would launch herself on the un¬ 
known stream. 

She bought a ticket to a Bussian variety show, 
which was just then having a vogue on Broadway, 
and found forgetfulness between its exotic charm 
and the night-view from the theatre roof, of the 
yellow-dappled park, its motors skimming and 
swerving upon curved ribbons of road. As she 
turned for a last look at it, standing apart from 
the crowd filing out, her solitary figure attracted 
the glances of a score of prosperous-looking men. 
But she did not see them. She thought: 

“This is so vast, what can it matter who 
one is? The Moira of yesterday is just as small 
compared to it, as this one here. Why should 
I care?” 

She laughed at this bit of philosophy. It was 
not particularly comforting, but it helped her to 
believe that she had given up the past. ... In 


BLINDFOLD 161 

her dreams the visions of the day mingled kaleido- 
scopically. 

Moira knew nothing abont New York in a prac¬ 
tical way. Her path had always been the narrow 
ronnd tripped by the fashionable visitor. There¬ 
fore, as she sat at breakfast with the “classified” 
columns of the Times before her she had no idea 
where she w T anted to live. It happened that the 
first addresses that she jotted down in her note¬ 
book were far downtown and to these she went 
looking for the cheapest single room she could 
find. 

The sights that met her eye filled her with half- 
humorous, half-tragic emotions. The landladies 
who greeted her were in the main revolting; she 
was taken into rooms that smelled, rooms that had 
cheap iron beds with battered brass knobs, that 
had carpets with holes in them and frayed lace 
curtains, grey with dirt, and hideous oak furnish¬ 
ings and coloured calendars on the walls, Three- 
fourths of them were not cleaned oftener than 
once a month, she was certain, and she determined 
to have cleanliness though every other comfort 
failed. 

She found it at last. On the west side of the 
Village she was attracted by a neat card bearing 
the words “furnished rooms” on the door of a 
brick house that looked many degrees better kept 
than its neighbours. A shy grey-haired woman 
admitted her. There were several rooms, all spot- 


162 


BLINDFOLD 


less, and she selected one reasonably priced, with 
white painted woodwork and plain furniture that 
she thought she might manage to live with. When 
she asked for the telephone to send for her luggage 
from the hotel, she was shown into the daughter’s 
room. In one corner of this pure haven was a 
small, square stand covered with chintz and 
draped with flowered cretonne. Upon it stood a 
discarded perfume bottle filled with holy water, a 
prayer-book and catechism, and a tall white stat¬ 
uette of the Virgin and child, with the monogram 
M. A. on the rococo base. On the wall above the 
stand was a black crucifix with the Christ in gilt. 
Behind the Christ was thrust a little palm cross. 
Still higher than the crucifix hung a photo-engrav¬ 
ing of the Madonna and child from some Italian 
master, in a gilded frame. The homely simplicity 
of the scene brought tears to the girl’s eyes. . . , 

But she felt a little less benevolent the next day 
when she asked Mrs. McCabe why there were no 
mirrors in the bathroom. That lady gazed at her 
with the sad severity of the timid and replied: 

“I don’t know. There just ain’t, and there 
won’t be.” 

In this atmosphere of staggering piety began 
the career of * 4 Mary Smith.” 


XVI 


By the end of two years Moira had repaid the 
last of the five hundred with which she had pos¬ 
sessed herself on leaving Thornhill; and accumu¬ 
lated a surplus of her own. From the day she 
quitted the Munson School of Stenography and 
Typewriting she had never experienced difficulty 
in securing a job and in making an excellent im¬ 
pression. The two changes which she had made 
were of her own volition. For more than six 
months now she had been secretary to the execu¬ 
tive vice-president of a soap company and had be¬ 
come something of an executive herself, on a sal¬ 
ary that still had a good margin in which to grow. 

This man was typical of the average young or¬ 
ganizing and selling marvel of the day, but he had 
a quality of intelligence in matters outside of 
business—limited, yet enough to be refreshing 
after the others she had encountered. Moira did 
not feel, as she had in other places, that she must 
suppress all the evidences of her breeding and 
education. This she had actually attempted to 
do hitherto; diplomatically ignoring awkward and 
ungrammatical English, adopting as much slang 
as she could retain without practice on the out¬ 
side, and generally pretending to be quite as much 

163 




164 


BLINDFOLD 


the low brow as most of tbe other girls whose 
chatter bewildered her in the washroom. 

With Barcroft, for the first time, she could per¬ 
mit herself to be natural, and this sense of ease 
increased her value enormously in “meeting the 
trade” and handling difficult people in his ab¬ 
sence. She checked him up on his errors of dic¬ 
tation without shame, but she had the rare good 
sense to know just when he was wiser in being 
wrong. She grew to respect, rather than disdain, 
the qualities that made men successful in business. 
They were qualities that did not interest her es¬ 
sentially, yet Barcroft’s mind had mysterious 
powers of insight that often called for silent ap¬ 
plause. 

Their relations developed into friendliness, and 
she felt his honest admiration without the fear 
that it would lead to complications. She had 
never yet herself encountered the boss-turned- 
lover—and the case was reputed to be so common 
that she felt far from flattered. She tried to ac¬ 
count for it on the score of her natural dignity, 
her quiet mode of dressing, her application to 
work, and her reticence; but these did not explain. 
She was not conspicuously dignified—when it 
seemed to her good to laugh she did so. Nor did 
she dress unattractively, much as she respected 
her budget. And her efficiency was not nearly so 
obtrusive as some brands of it she had observed. 
Moreover these qualities, she believed, in a young 


BLINDFOLD 


165 


and good-looking woman, would only make her 
more pleasing to men. She mocked at the whole 
business; it was another of those favourite Ameri¬ 
can panics, like the white slave traffic, the German 
spy-hunt, and the innumerable other horrors that 
supported the newspapers and bred the violence 
of mobs. 

She congratulated herself, nevertheless, that in 
spite of Barcroft’s understanding and deference, 
nothing of that sort was remotely likely to hap¬ 
pen. She had found a good post, agreeably 
within her powers and therefore easy, and she 
would be able to keep it indefinitely, with the 
hope of a steadily mounting salary. Then one 
evening they fell into a conversation after office 
hours. It ranged everywhere from the staging of 
Arthur Hopkins to the value of rotogravure as an 
advertising medium, from the proper length of 
skirts to the latest novel, and Barcroft broke into 
the discussion suddenly by making love to her. 
He too was a victim, as it appeared, of the quar¬ 
relsome and haphazard home. 

She had often asked herself, with some bitter¬ 
ness, what advantage her early life gave her in 
such a career as she now had to follow. She found 
it in this instance the most useful equipment she 
could have. Another girl would have thrown up 
the job. She managed adroitly to save it. She 
was not at all shocked by Barcroft’s love-making. 
She felt sorry for him; she talked to him sympa- 


166 


BLINDFOLD 


thetically about bis troubles, and in the end they 
were better friends than ever. Moreover, he was 
not long afterward grateful to her . . . the wife 
had come out victor over her lord . . . the yoke 
was again pleasing to his neck. 

Her life outside of the office was so devoid of 
romance that this brush with it at the soap com¬ 
pany was not unpleasant. She had occupied more 
than one furnished room since the start at Mrs. 
McCabe’s, and in her wanderings she had come 
necessarily in contact with the Village life, but 
she did not adopt its easy associations. She dis¬ 
covered very early that the Village was the gossip 
shop of the country. National—and international 
—news travelled fast there from tongue to tongue, 
concerning people even slightly known or con¬ 
nected with the known. You could not say when 
you would walk into one of its restaurants and 
find at the next table a prominent matron of your 
city. A half a dozen times she had dodged or 
stared down old acquaintances on the upper Ave¬ 
nue. 

There were girls she met from day to day, will¬ 
ing to become her friends—attractive girls who 
were doing interesting things. A few good 
cronies of this sort would have lightened her soli¬ 
tary evenings and perhaps helped her to find 
work more congenial than business. But friend¬ 
ships, to be worth while, had to be frank. She 
knew she would be tempted defiantly to tell all 


BLINDFOLD 


167 


about herself, and she shrank from doing so. Na¬ 
tive resourcefulness made it easy to draw the line 
of separation, but pride made it hard. She real¬ 
ized that her aloofness was causing criticism. In 
the two restaurants where she took most of her 
evening meals—because they were cheap and 
clean—the talk was not sympathetic. If one was 
free to have lovers ad lib. in the Village one was 
obviously not free to dispense with friends en¬ 
tirely. She seemed a snob. 

There were times when she gave herself up to 
storms of grief. It grew to be an act of self- 
preservation, a part of her philosophy of endur¬ 
ance. Long spells of weeping, or of a weary, 
helpless state of the spirit that was more thor¬ 
oughly a surrender and resignation than tears. 
Again and again she would cry through the dark¬ 
ness for Hal with the plaintive voice of a sick 
child—and even for the kind ghost of Mathilda 
Seymour. If she felt ashamed of these indul¬ 
gences, she argued that there could be no harm in 
them. Her old friends could not hear her. She 
was alone in all those little rooms, completely cut 
off from anything familiar, from all but the flut¬ 
tering, unreal, poignant memories of her beauti¬ 
ful childhood. Waves of passionate self-pity 
swept over her; she rebelled aloud against the bit¬ 
ter meanness of her betrayal; the awful burden of 
carrying her secret alone. 

In the end it was wise that she did not deny 


168 


BLINDFOLD 


these moods when they came to her and did not 
try to control them. From them she rose calm 
and clear-headed, charged with newly stored 
courage. They were spiritual baths, which cleaned 
her, a sort of self-asserting prayer. When they 
had gone not a vestige of rebellion was left in 
her; she felt grown in stature, ready to carry her 
fate like a flag. For a day or two afterward she 
would be sentimental and overfull of feeling. She 
would go out of her way to help beggars and walk 
a block to give dimes to the hurdy-gurdy man; 
and comfort the little girls in the filing room if 
they weren’t feeling well, or had just been called 
down by the head clerk. 

One thing that these rituals of solitary suffer¬ 
ing gave her was the buoyant, happy conscious¬ 
ness of artistic power, and she longed to return to 
painting. Until now it had seemed impossible. 
She could not command the space, the office robbed 
her of daylight, materials were too costly. Now 
she began to dream of creating a studio—the op¬ 
portunity to work might be managed somehow, 
once she had acquired the facilities. She saved 
more sedulously, giving up a part of her pleas¬ 
ures, an occasional new book and a theatre now 
and then, furbishing clothes for herself despite 
her hatred of the needle. 


XVII 


The floors were done and dry. Elsie Jennings, 
who had come in to help, was putting the third 
coat of black upon the new book-shelves, and 
Moira was waiting for the delivery of her three 
last pieces of furniture, which completed the pic¬ 
ture, for a time at least. Whether they came as 
they had been promised or not, the house-warm¬ 
ing party was to be held that evening, with Elsie, 
Jade Sommers, and Arthur, her husband. 

Arthur Sommers she had met as a printing 
salesman, visiting her office, and later had run 
across with Jade in a restaurant. He was a good 
sort, in his early thirties, jovial and proud of his 
plain citizenship, inclined to stoutness and much 
in love with his wife, the story writer. Elsie ran 
a shop in which she sold hand-made novelties and 
small house furnishings, that caught the sight¬ 
seers from the States and uptown with their 
faintly futurist air. It was a Saturday in the 
Spring, and had the party been postponed two 
days it might have celebrated Moira’s birthday. 
But she did not divulge that fact. 

4 ‘There,” said Elsie, “it’s done. And I think 
three coats will be enough . 9 9 

169 


170 


BLINDFOLD 


“Not so bad,” replied Moira. She stood mak¬ 
ing an inspection of her nearly finished home. 
The apartment itself was a discovery—quite a 
bargain—one huge room with tall windows, and 
a tiny bedroom and bath and kitchen closet, in an 
old five-story house, occupied by a small army of 
nondescript tenants. 

“How good you look to me, old barn!” was her 
fervent thought, which Elsie, watching her, di¬ 
vined. “If those chairs don’t come pretty soon,” 
she went on aloud, “they won’t come at all, and 
somebody will have to sit on the floor. I’m going 
out to shop for food.” 

“Yes, go ahead,” said Elsie. “This box of 
china has got to be unpacked and washed. I’ll do 
that in the meantime.” 

Moira had been in and out of the building on 
many occasions during the past week, but her 
curiosity had been slight regarding her neigh¬ 
bours. She couldn’t afford to be particular about 
them, so it seemed to her pointless to be curious. 
As she went downstairs, however, on the way to 
the grocery, a name on the door to a small room 
caught her attention. 

“Miles Harlindew!” she said, and found her 
memory flying to years before at Thornhill, and 
her lips repeating some lines about: 

“All shining parallels of track, 

All brown roads leading up.” 


BLINDFOLD 


171 


She had begun to see the man’s verses in the 
literary magazines when she couldn’t have been 
more than sixteen or seventeen, and many of 
them had sung themselves into her memory. One 
or two had given her an experience of discovery. 
But for the last few years she had found no more 
of his work. She had imagined him for some 
reason, as people are likely to think of anybody at 
all who gets things published, as successful, com¬ 
fortable, arrived. 

“He must be getting along in years,” she 
thought. “Poor fellow!” For she knew that 
room corresponded to her bedroom above, a mere 
cubby-hole, so small that she had to sit on her 
bed to look in the dressing table mirror. 

It was her first party in years, and she did not 
need the cocktails—which Arthur Sommers had 
brought in a silver flask—to give her a thrill. She 
fell in love with her guests and charmed them 
into something like wonder. So this was the un¬ 
approachable Mary Smith! 

“Oh, I’ve got distinguished literary neigh¬ 
bours,” she announced. “Miles Harlindew is on 
the floor below.” 

A ripple of amusement greeted her remark. 

“But I remember some stunning poems of his,” 
she went on. 

“Oh, yes,” put in Jade, “but nobody knows 
he’s alive these days. He doesn’t even know it 
himself.” 


172 


BLINDFOLD 


“Come off,” said her husband. “I see him of¬ 
ten, very much alive. Any man who does his 
duty violating the Eighteenth Amendment as reg¬ 
ularly as Miles, has my vote. What do you say if 
I get him.” 

“If he’s sober,” put in Jade. 

Sommers glanced at Moira for consent, and she 
gave it with a brisk nod. These people knew more 
about the man than she and no doubt were justi¬ 
fied in what they said; nevertheless she felt a 
vague resentment. What would they say if they 
knew all there was to be known about herself? 
Experience had already taught her that beneath 
the literal and semi-bohemian veneer of her 
friends there was a stern core of respecta¬ 
bility. 

Harlindew came and was sober. He was pain¬ 
fully and tiresomely sober, and she heartily 
wished they had saved some of Arthur’s cock¬ 
tails. He sat down stiffly and ventured common¬ 
places when spoken to. She found him a satis¬ 
factory physical specimen, showing more years 
than she expected, in premature lines. He was 
neither tall nor short, of the type that never ac¬ 
quires flesh, somewhat shaggy behind the ears, 
with a lop-sided face. One jaw was stronger than 
the other, one eye keener than the other, one brow 
more pleasing in conformation than the other—• 
and these inequalities were not all on the same 
side of his face. 


BLINDFOLD 


173 


When she recited his verses, he was not pleased. 
He depreciated them vigorously and was very 
uncomfortable. He called them the errors of his 
youth. The one thing that he took extraordinary 
interest in was a talk with Sommers about busi¬ 
ness. She then watched his gestures and anima¬ 
tion with pleasure. They made a change in the 
man’s whole appearance. 

6 ‘I’m thinking seriously of going into business,” 
he announced in a grave voice, and seemed a little 
disappointed that this statement was not received 
with greater acclaim. The evening ended, damp¬ 
ened, on the whole, by his presence. 

“How fiercely shy he is about his work,” said 
Moira to the others, as they stood at the door 
ready to go. 

“Big night last night,” said Arthur, in a stage 
whisper. “Feeling rocky.” 

“I hope you don’t meet him somewhere at three 
in the morning,” added Elsie. “He’ll reel it off 
to you then until you’ll be sorry.” 

Yet she thought more about what she saw of 
Harlindew, during his short stay in her rooms, 
than of anything else that had happened that 
night. He was the only young man she had met 
in New York whom she wanted to talk to. It was,, 
possibly, a childish delusion, a fancy arising out 
of the fact that both of them were miserable about 
something, obviously about something it was im¬ 
possible to discuss. 


174 


BLINDFOLD 


A few days later she met him on the stairs, 
and he blushed and stammered: 

“I believe you are the only person alive who 
still cares anything for my poetry.’’ 

He was gone too quickly for her to answer. She 
did not see him again for a week, and when she 
did she invited him to tea. In an hour he was as 
much at his ease as though he had known her for¬ 
ever, and stayed so long he expressed the fear of 
having bored her. Soon after that she was seeing 
him two or three times a week. 

He came because she listened to his monologues. 
Moira found that this was the man’s characteris¬ 
tic. Shy to the point of morbidness in company, 
she no sooner began to encourage him alone than 
he talked without end. His ideas were neither 
very well thought out nor very clearly expressed, 
but they stimulated her. He poured forth the 
most curious tag-ends of experience, made ex¬ 
traordinary confessions with few traces of shame, 
chattered cynically, humorously, passionately and 
autocratically by turns about writing and all the 
arts, and then stopped suddenly in the midst of 
things, frightened to silence by the realization of 
her presence and the boldness of his own tongue. 
Only one thing could have enabled him to indulge 
this luxury and keep coming—a knowledge of her 
interest, and she gave it honestly. She saw that 
the inner life of this young man and her own had 
been similar. He soon passed from Miss Smith 


BLINDFOLD 


175 


to Mary, and from Mary to Madonna, and finding 
that the last was to his taste, he held to it. Before 
long he was giving full rein to a natural streak 
of fantastic high spirits and messing about her 
place like a privileged person. 

She was, for some reason, wholly delighted by 
all this. The crushed spirit he had shown at their 
first meeting had seemed tragically inappropriate 
and she was glad to be drawing anybody out who 
needed it. The man, set beside most of the people 
she had known, was a freak, certainly, but he was 
not an impossible freak. And he differed from 
such people as Selden Van Nostrand in depth, 
breadth and sensitive contact with life. With a 
perfectly conventional background, he had simply, 
she thought, allowed his spiritual life to express 
itself in his physical life from an early age. His 
courtesy was innate and usually unfailing, on 
some occasions oppressive—but it was a quality 
she would not have liked to find lacking. His flat¬ 
tery she had to accept as simply as she could; he 
exhausted his vocabulary in finding terms for her 
beauty. It seemed an ever-renewed miracle to 
him, which he had to talk about to enjoy. 

“Madonna,’’ he said one day, 4 'you should be 
some queen like Margaret of Navarre. I should 
like to be one of the story tellers of your court. It 
is a commentary on our beastly times that such a 
one as you is a stenographer.” 

"If I had the courage—as you have—I wouldn’t 




176 BLINDFOLD 

be,” she laughed, “but it scares me to think of 
going my own way. ’’ 

“Ah, that is one thing I came to ask you about. 
I must have told you that I intend going into 
business.” 

“But why?” she asked, “w T hy should you, after 
all?” 

“Well, when we are young we expect all things 
to come to us. We don’t want them just to-day, 
but to-morrow?—we’ll wdiistle and down they will 
come from the sky. That’s what we think. In my 
case, however, they haven’t come. Ergo, I have 
lived disgracefully. Now I must begin to die 
gracefully by turning to work. Yet isn’t it pos¬ 
sible to look upon the grotesque preoccupation of 
the American male as a trade, a form of artisan- 
ship, a deed of the left hand? I know a man who 
sells advertising, and who has more confidence 
in me than I should dare to have in myself. He 
is decent enough to think that I can supply what 
he wants. Why not try it?” 

“Aren’t you writing anything nowadays, 
Miles?” 

“Nothing,” he said, with a shrug. “Book re¬ 
views! What are book reviews? Every time I 
have to go to see an editor and ask for a book, it 
makes me feel as though selling hairpins from 
house to house is more respectable. Besides, the 
literary world has forgotten me. I only fill up 
space.” 


BLINDFOLD 


177 


i i Nonsense,’’ said she vehemently. 11 And you ’re 
wrong about business. Business is pretty awful. 
I suppose you’ll have to find that out for your¬ 
self. ’’ 

“There are more delightful occupations, true. 
I have always had an ambition to be a cab-driver. 
It is the sole profession in which one becomes a 
licensed eavesdropper. Excellent for the literary 
man. You know people mind the cabby no more 
than if he were the horse. I mean a horse-cab, of 
course . . . only in such leisurely vehicles do peo¬ 
ple expose their souls, their most intimate secrets. 
But I haven’t the cabby’s training. From things 
you have said, I fancied you knew horses.” 

“A little. When I was a young girl I had some 
playmates who owned them.” 

“Noble beasts. I’m sure they would break the 
neck of any poor fool who had condescended to 
Pegasus.” 

“The trouble with you, Miles, is that you don’t 
condescend often enough, nor persistently enough. 
You ought to be writing poems at this moment. 
You should have been doing it these last five 
years.” 

“The impulse to creation begins with a peculiar 
tickling of the tummy that I haven’t felt for ages.” 

Her eagerness to start him writing usually 
came to nothing in some such joke. At other times 
he would grow more serious. 

“No, Madonna, I cannot. The blossom of life 


178 


BLINDFOLD 


is gone—only the bare stalk is left. It may flower 
again, but it must be watered and fed. My affair 
with poetry has ended like so many marriages— 
in disillusion. That is rough, when one realizes 
that poetry demands the hardest labour for the 
smallest return of any occupation on earth. It 
takes all one’s youth, at the expense of practical 
things—and one is left with a handful of frail re¬ 
sults that are hardly more substantial than 
memories. But the greater the early love, the 
more complete must be the separation, and one 
must recognize it when it comes. One must re¬ 
nounce; in that lies the only hope of renewal. 
People are mistaken about life being a steady 
progress from youth to age, anyway. It’s a con¬ 
stant shuttling from age to youth and back again. 
We all grow senile about every seven years, and 
then young again. I am in a senile period. Why 
should I do poetry the dishonour of pursuing her 
in such a state. Bah, it is better to do anything 
else. You mustn’t be impatient with me. I do 
not flower very often—but neither does the cen¬ 
tury plant. And it is counted among the world’s 
wonders. ’ ’ 

“Well,” she said consolingly, “perhaps you are 
right. Better a little that is good than a lot that 
is indifferent. All I know is that there are repu¬ 
tations built on no more talent than yours.” 

“If I could believe that,” he said thoughtfully, 
“I should not surrender. But I can’t believe it. 


BLINDFOLD 


179 


I shall have to squeeze business for a time, as one 
squeezes an orange—for the golden juice. I shall 
hoard it, as if every ounce meant a golden hour. 
Then we shall see. My God! Madonna /’ he burst 
forth. 4 ‘Fifty dollars a week—there in my hand, 
every week . Think of it. All my life fifty dollars 
has seemed like the other side of the moon.” 

The next day he began the work of which he 
had talked so much. She had known him a month. 
Now for some time, she was to see little of him. 
He left early and returned late, and with the long 
summer evenings at hand, she began to paint. 

It was very hard to drive herself to work. Her 
hands were stiff; her senses were clumsy, and her 
first efforts resulted in little more than a waste of 
valuable materials. She needed everything— 
models, encouragement, criticism. These even 
Elsie or Miles could have furnished after a fash¬ 
ion, but she dared not ask them—she was not 
ready for that. She contented herself with trials 
at still life, with experiments, with attempts at 
self-portraiture. 

Then slowly the love of simply applying the 
brush, the fever of trying and trying again for 
the effects she wanted, the joy of feeling momen¬ 
tary hints of power, and of succeeding now and 
then with some little thing, quickened her interest, 
until the time came when she found herself stand¬ 
ing up to her canvas until it had grown almost 
dark. 



180 


BLINDFOLD 


She went with Elsie one night to the theatre and 
when they returned to Elsie’s rooms, Moira con¬ 
fessed that she had begun to work. They talked 
until three in the morning. She came away elated, 
and still sleepless, not the least bit tired. The 
mere divulging of her modest ambitions had 
started her blood bounding, and she swung buoy¬ 
antly down the street. 

A block or two from her house she heard voices, 
and against the glow of a lamp she saw the figure 
of a policeman leaning over a man who lay on the 
pavement luxuriously supporting his head from 
the flagging with folded arms. 

“Come on, now, get up,” said the officer. “I’ve 
fooled long enough. If you don’t get up I’ll take 
you where you’ll have a long rest.” 

The voice that replied was unmistakably Miles 
Harlindew’s. “Preposterous,” he said, running 
his consonants together. “I am lying on in’own 
prop’ty. It was legally d’vised to me by God the 
Father. Six feet by three of solid earth. That’s 
my allotment. You’ve spoiled it by putting con¬ 
crete on it, but I’ll be a good fellow. Won’t com¬ 
plain. It’s all right. Just go away.” 

“Get up, I tell ya.” 

“What! Can’t a man lie on his own pat-patri¬ 
mony, you blamed ass! It’s goin’ to be mine f’r 
eternity, and I choose to use it now!” 

“We’ll see who’s a blamed ass, young feller. 
Come on!” 


BLINDFOLD 181 

Moira interrupted as the patrolman was about 
to grasp Harlindew’s shoulder. 

“Officer,’’ she said hurriedly, “I know this man. 
He lives in the same house I am in. I think I can 
get him to go with me, if you won’t take him.” 

“Sure. That’s all right. I don’t want him if 
he’ll get out of here. I’ve had this bird before, 
and it might go hard with him.” 

“Thank you,” she said fervently. Miles was 
on his feet in a second, a little unsteady but 
effusively polite, repeating the words “divine Ma¬ 
donna” in a voice that must have carried to many 
windows. 

“Officer,” he said, “meet Madonna—no, meet 
Ariadne. Ariadne, the night is a labyrinth—you 
bring me a thread. ’ ’ 

At his door he insisted upon going up with her 
—“just for a second”—and she could not refuse 
him. He sat on the couch, pursuing a strange, 
disjointed tale of the day’s adventures. He told 
twice about a steel-worker he had met in a boot¬ 
legger’s house, who once had worked on the Wool- 
worth, forty stories up. “Said he never went up 
on the steel in the morning without three whiskies 
—if he had he’d a fallen off, ’ ’ said Miles. * ‘ That’s 
good—if he had he’d a fallen off.” The idea 
seemed to fill him with extraordinary delight. 
But other things were on his mind also. Some 
one he called “the damn buzzard at the office” 
came in for a large share of abuse. 


182 


BLINDFOLD 


“If you want to see the damned buzzard to¬ 
morrow, you’d better go downstairs and sleep,” 
she suggested. “You won’t feel much like work.” 

“Work? Never mind work. . . . Valuable 
man. . . . Know my own value. ... Not at all 
sleepy, anyway. ...” A moment later while she 
was out of the room he stretched full length on 
the couch and fell asleep. 

She did not have the heart to wake him in the 
morning. If her own racket, as she flew about 
preparing to leave, had no effect upon his deep 
unconsciousness, it would probably take too much 
effort anyway. At noon, however, she found him 
just beginning to stir about, making coffee in her 
little kitchen, for which he apologized, but with 
no sheepishness. He seemed, on the contrary, to 
find excessive enjoyment in having awakened in 
a strange place, invaded by a lovely hostess. She 
took the role of cook out of his hands. 

“Well,” he said when they were seated, “I sup¬ 
pose I am in a pickle. Must say something to 
Jones. Wonder what it’ll be. All’s fair, I imag¬ 
ine, in war and business. Any old alibi goes.” 

“But you’re a valuable man, Miles, you know,” 
she mocked, “as you said several times last 
night. ’ ’ 

His smile was a trifle wan. It was too soon by 
all means to bid good-bye to the other side of the 
moon—that regular fifty a week. 

“You know, I’ve never had to be anywhere I 


BLINDFOLD 183 

didn’t want to be, in ... in God knows when,” he 
declared. “Not easy to get the habit. But I’m 
doing well down there. Honest, I’m sort of proud 
about it.” 

Moira thought that he seemed to be worrying 
very little about his remissness, not even very 
actively at work on the problem of finding an ex¬ 
cuse. And it was late, even for that. She almost 
hated to undeceive him, it concerned him so 
slightly. Finally she said: 

‘ 1 1 telephoned your Jones. I told him you were 
too ill to come down. Was that right?” 

But obviously this service was in his eyes in¬ 
calculably great. The look he gave her made her 
want to laugh. She had not thought it pos¬ 
sible for a man to be so pathetically helpless, so 
profoundly grateful for an act of friendly fore¬ 
sight. 

“How did it happen, Miles?” 

“Oh, I think the monotony got on my nerves. 
Then yesterday everything went wrong; and I 
thought five o’clock would never come. Eight 
hours! By Jove, it sometimes seems like eight 
years.” 

“Yes, it does,” she replied, remembering her 
first months of it. 

“Do you get used to it?” he asked anxiously. 

“Oh, yes, it comes to be a good deal like breath¬ 
ing.” 


XVIII 


They started out without objective, left the 
train at a little station far down the southern part 
of Long Island and walked miles through a flat 
country of stunted woods and sandy, almost de¬ 
serted roads. 

It was toward the end of a coppery afternoon, 
the hazy air aflame with the sun taking on the 
colour of the burnished trees. To Moria, it 
had been an unreal day too, for her thoughts were 
running upon revolutionary impulses, plans that 
would have seemed impossibly romantic a few 
months before. Was it only because of this sud¬ 
denly important comradeship with Miles Harlin- 
dew that she had quite painfully realized a sense 
of loss? She needed much more than life was 
giving her, much more than her mere comfort 
and independence, even than her painting. Their 
half year together had been full of a strangely 
wide sympathy. But it had also been casual, with¬ 
out purpose and without end. The first tang and 
odour of Autumn cold always brought a stirring 
of unreasonable energy in her, a sense of dissatis¬ 
faction ... a prophecy of change. But now it was 
like nothing she had ever known before, a stifling 
in the midst of limitless air to breathe. 

“ Seasons must be responsible for a great deal 

184 


BLINDFOLD 


185 


in life,’ ? she said. “I wonder if anything would 
get itself done at all, if it were not for them, for 
the urging they give us to act.” 

4 ‘ I have thought that too, ’ ’ replied Miles. “ You 
could almost live, simply by letting the time of the 
year do what it will with you. I shouldn’t be 
shocked if some one told me I had lived that way 
myself, most of my life.” 

He drew out a pipe, filled and lighted it, and 
the fragrant smell was pleasing to her nostrils. 
•She liked his agreeable, easy ways. He needed 
little to be happy, his thoughts, his books, to¬ 
bacco, clothes that seemed to have grown older 
with him. Since that diffused night he had spent 
in her rooms in June, his life had run along in a 
quiet groove, free from excitement or discontent 
—a period during which, as he told her, weeks 
seemed so much longer because they were filled 
with so many more and varied impressions, and 
these impressions were caught and relished and 
fixed as they passed. Excitement and sprees were 
monotonous, not varied, and one lost almost all of 
one’s impressions. . . . She had shared this slow 
magic with him, and she understood what he 
meant. Suddenly she found herself asking him to 
marry her. 

“But, child,” he said, with amusement in his 
face and voice, “you couldn’t do that.” 

“I’m not a child,” she replied, with unmistak¬ 
able seriousness, “and I could. I love you.” 


186 


BLINDFOLD 


He stopped walking and faced her, holding his 
pipe halfway to his month and looking at her in 
blank amazement. 

“My dear Mary!” he exclaimed. 

“My name isn’t Mary,” she broke in. “It’s 
Moira. Do you like it ? ” 

“Moira! Why haven’t you told me that!” 

“There’s even more to tell, Miles.” 

“But what do you mean!” 

“I suppose you won’t answer my question, un¬ 
til you hear the rest! ’ ’ 

“I shall be glad to hear anything you want to 
tell,” he replied slowly. “But first, my dear girl, 
do you know you are the stars in the sky! Do 
you know you are a prize for sultans, for em¬ 
perors, for decent people, for people infinitely bet¬ 
ter than I am! I’m a stopping place in your 
passage. Not that. ... I’m as worthless as a 
man can very well be. I think, in short, some¬ 
thing has made you a little mad.” 

“You’re not worthless,” she replied vehe¬ 
mently. “I’m tired of hearing you say you are. 
. . . If all this means you don’t love me and don’t 
want me, there’s nothing more to be said. If it 
means that you think you are not good enough 
for me, that’s foolish. And in that case—there is 
—more to be said.” 

She trembled a little. Both were under the 
stress of a new and powerful feeling. . . . She 
wanted more than anything else in the world to 


BLINDFOLD 


187 


take hold of him, to shake him, to keep on shaking 
him, because he had not been equal to asking of 
her what she had just now asked of him. She 
wanted to love him as nobody had ever loved him; 
to love him until he respected himself. It needed 
no more than a spur, something to make him so 
proud that he could scarcely believe in his happi¬ 
ness. She could do that for him, she was equal to 
it, because she did love him and she was beautiful 
and desirable. She thought of herself, in that in¬ 
stant, as Moira Seymour of Thornhill. But in the 
next she did not. It was so terribly hard to say 
what she had to tell him. 

Moira’s persistence in her reckless proposal had 
given rise to a tempest of forces in Miles Harlin- 
dew. The notion of marrying her had never even 
formed in his dispirited brain. Now it swept 
through him like a cleansing and strengthening 
hope. He faced her with the uncertainty of a man 
who is still afraid to trust his own understanding. 

“Wait, Miles !” she said, “I’ve something more 
to tell you.” She began hurriedly, like a guilty 
child, but as she went on her voice became firm. 
“I don’t know who my father was. I was told his 
name was Williams, but I don’t know whether he 
is alive or dead. I’m the child of a servant who 
was never married. You see if you married me, 
it might be said that I wanted the protection of 
your name. I’ve none of my own.” 

It was his turn to be impatient, and he had an 


188 BLINDFOLD 

impulse now to laugh and take her in his arms. 
But he held back. 

“Mary,” he said seriously, “in the first place 
what has all that to do with it ? ” 

“But it’s true. And you’ve forgotten my name 
is Moira.” 

“I don’t care. It’s all beside the point. I’ve 
never been strong for relatives, my own kin into 
the bargain. I might not enjoy yours. But do 
you suppose it makes any difference to any one 
who your father is? Your father and mother are 
your face, your beautiful, glorious face. Your 
birthright is yourself, your incredible perfection. 
Don’t you see, it isn’t your father or your mother 
you’re giving up, but yourself, all this miracle? 
You can’t give all that to me. I’m not worth it. 
I can’t count on myself. How can I ask you to 
count on me?” 

“You don’t know yourself. You never have.” 

“Mary!” he cried, and she let him continue 
using the old name which came so naturally. She 
felt his intense desire to be honest, while it an¬ 
gered and annoyed her. Why should he decide 
these things for her? But he went on, “Don’t you 
see? This is just a—a sentiment, a ridiculous il¬ 
lusion about your birth.” 

“It’s true,” she replied. “I must know that 
you believe it’s true—or nothing can go on.” 

“If it were a thousand times true it wouldn’t 
make me good enough for you.” 



BLINDFOLD 


189 


She sat down beside the road. Tears were com¬ 
ing to her eyes, and she hated to have him see 
them. 

“Miles,’’ she said, “I thought once I couldn’t 
love again, hut you’ve seemed like something 
lost to me and come back. It’s the same thing in 
my heart, only older and more real. If you don’t 
mind my being what I am, if you want me, please 
come and take me. Only don’t argue.” 

His close embrace was like the end of a journey 
she had been travelling all these last weeks quite 
unconsciously. His passion, the fierce, sudden, 
exacting eagerness of the luckless taken unaware 
by great good fortune, could not hurt her too 
much. 

“You must forgive me if I am quite mad,” he 
stammered. “Look at me. Am I sane, Madonna 
beloved?” 

She did look at him, but she saw, beyond the 
cadaverous face and humble eyes, a man who 
carried, she hoped, the power of change within 
him. She was completely happy to have that job 
for her own. Yesterday she had had loneliness, 
a heavy secret, futility. Now she had everything 
that she had ever lost; and more, the knowledge 
of her own strength. What if it did fail, it would 
be this while it lasted. . . . 


XIX 


“Oh, when I was in love with you 
Then I was clean and brave, 

And miles around the wonder grew 
How well did I behave . . 

“It’s old Housman all over again,” cried Har- 
lindew, in high glee. “Since I married you, I’ve 
become a respected citizen. People stop me on 
the street and want to talk who haven’t deigned 
to give me a wink in years.” 

“Don’t forget there is a second verse,” said 
Moira. 

“But now the fancy passes by 
And nothing will remain 
And miles around they’ll say that I 
Am quite myself again.” 

“Yes, but he had to add that to make it a well- 
rounded thought. The first is the only one that 
counts. Well-rounded thoughts are an abomina¬ 
tion. Or else he had to live up to the well known 
Housman cynicism. But isn’t this enough for one 
sitting? I’m hungry.” 

“Just five minutes more. There’s something I 
don’t want to miss about that light. I can’t ever 
get you into the same position twice. You’re 
changeable enough—physically!” she concluded. 

190 


BLINDFOLD 


191 


He strolled over to the portrait when she had 
released him and criticized it outrageously. The 
face was all wrong, the colour of the hair absurd, 
the brow too handsome. It was a good picture 
perhaps, but a poor portrait. Her sketches of him 
were better. She had a nice loose line in sketch¬ 
ing and didn’t flatter so much. Women ought 
never to paint men, at least never their sweet¬ 
hearts. They weren’t honest enough. They were 
too romantic. But this was all delivered in the ut¬ 
most good nature and she did not resent it. She 
thought he was quite a good critic of painting. 
He liked things of very crude strength, directness. 
Her work, she herself was inclined to admit, in¬ 
dulged in glamour—it was the hardest thing to 
avoid. But she hoped that in ten or twenty years 
she would do something good; that was time 
enough. 

As a matter of fact, Miles Harlindew thought 
his wife’s work remarkably fine and had often 
said so. Then, discovering she was so modest 
about it that praise was downright displeasing to 
her, he adopted the bantering tone. He catered to 
her modesty by giving her all the severe criticism 
he dared to. And on the whole it resulted in a 
better understanding. 

Standing in the doorway, he watched her with 
some impatience, while she put on a hat, powdered 
her nose, dabbed at her nails and stood in front 
of the mirror gazing at herself in satisfied ani- 


192 


BLINDFOLD 


mation. She liked to make him wait. Then they 
slipped down the narrow carpeted stairs and into 
the brilliant afternoon, breathless and laughing. 
It was not surprising that people looked twice at 
the pair. She wondered if there were any two 
lovers who enjoyed their holidays together as 
much as they. There were so many things to do 
and it needed so little to make them memorable. 
A walk through Italian streets, flooded with little 
bodies and loud with cries, to some unknown res¬ 
taurant; or up the Avenue in the dusk to the 
Park; or a* long ride in front of the bus—what¬ 
ever met their eyes on these jaunts was fresh and 
new though they had seen it a hundred times be¬ 
fore. There was no place for a honeymoon like 
New York: it meant that the honeymoon never 
ended. 

Marriage had hardly changed an outward de¬ 
tail of their lives. She had refused to give up 
her job, which he somehow expected she could do. 
Perhaps she could paint and try to sell her work. 
It appeared to him so much more fitting. But 
Moira did not wish to sell her paintings, even if 
she had thought them worth any money. All that 
could wait. Wasn’t his work waiting too? Poor 
boy! How could any one expect him to write with 
his time all taken up ? 

“But,” he objected, “I may have to take care 
of more than you one of these days. Hadn’t I 
better get used to it?” 


BLINDFOLD 193 

“Nonsense,’’ she replied. “That’s all the more 
reason why I should be earning now.’’ 

Miles had retained his room downstairs, much 
as it was, except that she saw it was kept in some 
sort of order for him. Her own tiny living quar¬ 
ters were not enough comfortably for two, and she 
had foreseen that he would have many a spell 
when he wanted to be quite alone. To her mind 
he was very chivalrous in hiding his low-spirited 
moments from her. When he left her early after 
dinner to spend the evening and the night in his 
room, she knew that it was a signal for one of 
these. He was working off some disappointment, 
some mood of defeat. These troubles had gen¬ 
erally fled by morning. He would be in her bed¬ 
room, before she woke up, noisy and hungry, and 
full of jokes. 

“You’re making me too happy to write,” he 
told her on one such occasion, as he sat on her 
bedside and put her hand to his lips. “You 
remember Rossetti says: 

“By thine own tears thy song must tears beget 
0 Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none 
Except thy manifest heart and save thine own 

Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.” 

He had the old-fashioned way of reading poetry, 
intoning it without much shading or expression—* 
and he threw himself into it. She thought nobody 


194 BLINDFOLD 

was just like him when he did that entirely for 
his own pleasure. 

“But he speaks of ardour as well as anguish /’ 
she objected. 

“Yes, I suppose poetry itself does not have to 
he sad. But it comes out of something like sad¬ 
ness. Bossetti was right. It is as foolish to write 
poetry in the midst of happiness as to try to find 
words for what you look like now—when I can 
be looking at you instead. How beautiful you are 
when you wake.” 

It occurred to Moira that she might be a little 
distressed over all this. She wanted him to be 
happy, but she also wanted him to write—and be¬ 
come famous or at least deserve it in her eyes. 
But her good sense brushed his idle words aside. 
Why encourage harbouring such notions! She 
had never known any one who spoke his mind 
aloud so continuously as he did, and she knew 
that many of the things he said simply passed 
through it aimlessly. They were without signifi¬ 
cance except the significance of always tossing up 
other thoughts, and still others, until the right 
one came. This thinking aloud had a ruthless 
quality that would have hurt a more sensitive 
wife. It did not trouble her. 

She decided there was no hurry about his get¬ 
ting to work. She did not want him to do it until 
he could do his best. Nothing less than that she 
wished to foster. They were living their lives to 



BLINDFOLD 


195 


the full, now, through each other. In good time 
they would branch out and live in wider circles. 
Miles was storing up treasures that would find 
utterance one of these days. Indeed he was writ¬ 
ing—slight, experimental things which she did not 
like, it was true, but which would help to open up 
the dried springs of his invention. This period 
of his life was certainly not less promising than 
the five years before she had met him, arid years 
of picking up a mere living by critical trifles. 

An event that she did not foresee, however, 
happened shortly afterward. A week came when 
Harlindew spent almost no time with her. He 
disappeared into his room early; at breakfast he 
seemed to have slept little, and he was distracted 
and irritable. When the time came to go down¬ 
town, she felt that he resented it. He would 
dawdle and temporize and start oft anywhere 
from a quarter to a half hour late. The secrecy 
of his movements were a trial to her, and she 
could not get anything out of him by casual ques¬ 
tioning. His answers were indirect, hinting at 
work. Then her questioning stopped. She real¬ 
ized that she was growing angry; malicious im¬ 
pulses came to her, a desire for petty revenge, 
and all this warned her that she was vainer than 
she had believed. She depended upon his atten¬ 
tions, his love-making, his continual amusing flat¬ 
tery. That was the unfairness of marriage, she 
argued. It taught you to expect certain things 


196 BLINDFOLD 

you had got on very well without before. But if 
your single mate withheld them, you could 
not go elsewhere to supply them. . . . After six 
days of this, Moira began to believe herself a 
philosopher, and something of a cynic as well. 
She had kept her temper, but she had also been 
experimenting with the green serpent of disillu¬ 
sionment. 

The thing ended with a visit to her bedroom at 
two in the morning. He was a little excited by 
liquor, a most unusual thing since their marriage, 
yet she was sure he had not been away. Most of 
this excitement came from another cause. He 
held in his hand a half a dozen sheets of paper 
and began without preliminaries to read them to 
her. They were new poems, of course—how 
stupid she had been not to suspect it! When 
he had finished reading them she snatched them 
from him with cries of delight and read them her¬ 
self. 

“I have to see the words—the blessed words!” 
she declared. 

He walked out of the room, leaving the crinkly 
papers with her, walked on air yet timorously, 
jumping half out of his boots at every slight noise 
she made with the sheets. When he came back 
he found tear-drops clinging to her lashes. She 
was still reading the poems as though to fix 
them then and there in her mind. She laid back 
on the pillows and asked him to read them all over 



BLINDFOLD 197 

himself aloud, and “very slowly.’’ It was a long 
moment after lie had ended that she spoke. 

“They’re better than anything you’ve done,” 
she said, with a contentment that filled him with 
torturing pangs of delight. “As good and better 
than the best in your book. It’s come back to you, 
Miles, I always knew it would. Oh, isn’t it won¬ 
derful ! ’ ’ 

He sat down, suddenly downcast and sheepish 
in the midst of his elation. 

“But if this is going to happen to me often, 
what am I going to do!” he said. “I’ve lived 
those things. It’s been hell and heaven, Moira. I 
took two afternoons off from the office. I had to. 
It was all but impossible to go.” 

She sat up in bed and gazed at him in profound 
reflection. She felt she knew what he meant. It 
was not childish, not perverse. How could such 
things be mixed up in the same day, this fine fer¬ 
vour of creation, and that mechanical, wretched 
work! What she most desired him to be he was 
now, and that he must continue to be at the cost 
of everything else. She suddenly saw life rosy 
and fresh ahead of them, untrammelled by any¬ 
thing base, full of brave expression. 

“Never mind, never mind!” she cried excitedly. 
“Listen, you can hold on two months longer some¬ 
how. In two months my lease will be up. We’ve 
got eighteen hundred dollars between us now, and 
by that time we ought to have two thousand. 


198 


BLINDFOLD 


We’ll just quit cold, Miles, drop everything. 
Somewhere in Europe we can live for nothing, live 
forever on that. Who knows what can happen 
before it is gone? We might never have to come 
back—never until we wanted to. You can go on 
writing and writing these gorgeous things!” 

“My God,” he murmured, “it would be marvel¬ 
lous. It could be done. ... 0 Magician!” 


XX 


The experience of that night was one of those 
moments on the Olympus of extravagant hope, be¬ 
fore which it is merciful to draw the veil. In one 
hour they seemed to have attained all that life 
held for the most fortunate—freedom, work, love. 

Therefore, had they stepped from the tropical 
belt to the Arctic circle; had they plunged from 
the top of a sunlit tower to the depths of a coal 
shaft, the change which came during the next 
month could not have been greater. Moira had 
never anticipated resenting her first baby. Prep¬ 
arations for the trip, expenditures for the trip, 
had first been slackened up in mid career, as they 
waited apprehensively and then had been aban¬ 
doned with the abruptness that only comes when 
death enters a house. There lay the parapher¬ 
nalia of travel, new and useless. They had drifted 
into a state of divine negligence. Jobs and all 
practical affairs went along any old way; they 
were matters soon to be jettisoned like an old 
coat. Then came this reality as if the four walls 
of a prison had been dropped about them in a day. 

It was not so bad as that of course, when the 

first rude awakening had passed. Life substitutes 

one enthusiasm for another. Miles recovered ad- 

199 


200 


BLINDFOLD 


mirably at once; he spent his eloquence reassuring 
her that this was the best thing that could have 
happened to them. He had all the normal delight 
in the prospect of fatherhood. 

But Moira was not so easily reconciled. She 
would always look upon that baby as something a 
little too unreasonably expensive. She was not 
ready for it, and had the plan of going abroad 
been broached earlier she would never have had 
it. She w r ould have been more pleased had Miles 
not tried so hard to make her see it in a better 
light. She did not doubt his sincerity, nor that 
he would be one whose joy in children of his own 
would be unbounded. But she hated to think of 
his taking one burden after another from her 
shoulders until he would be carrying them all, 
while she waited helplessly. She had never 
thought him, as yet, strong enough without her. 

So she did not relinquish her burdens until she 
had to. She worked on, until the last day she could 
without embarrassment. After a season of care¬ 
ful figuring she estimated that what they had 
saved, with Miles’ salary (which had been slightly 
increased not long before) would enable them to 
maintain their present comforts until she got back 
to earning. She hoped that could be managed 
somehow within two years. 

But if the idea of having a child was an ad¬ 
venture, they both had to admit that the condi¬ 
tions it called for were somewhat depressing. 


BLINDFOLD 


201 


For one thing, they had to have more space. 
The first work she did after leaving Barcroft’s 
establishment was to move to a flat in the eighties 
on the west side. In every particular this place 
lacked the charm of her studio, nor could anything 
they did to it or put into it make it seem the same. 
The little kennel-like separations called rooms 
were diabolically invented for people who had to 
have children, and so constructed as to make them 
hate the fact that they had them. 

At the earliest hint of the baby’s coming she 
noticed changes in Miles. He had never been very 
regular or responsible about office hours. Now it 
worried him if he was a half minute late in get¬ 
ting started. He talked less, he exaggerated less. 
He seemed to be unwilling to discuss books, or 
any of the old subjects that had enthralled him. 
He spoke much of there being a future 4 4 in the 
firm,” for a chap who 64 really buckled down and 
dug up results.” She realized that he was be¬ 
ginning to regard his job as a permanent sup¬ 
port. 

He came home sometimes with bundles of 
papers filled with figures and sat in the little 
study at night, writing what he called “plans” 
and “copy” and making “market analyses.” It 
was the same sort of jargon that Barcroft talked 
incessantly—“sales and distribution,” “consumer 
demand,” and “dealer helps.” It had sounded 
all right from Barcroft; but from Miles . . , 


202 


BLINDFOLD 


She found among his papers rough drafts in his 
own hand of advertisements extolling the value 
of hog foods, lice powder, piston rings—and one 
long story about “How I raised my salary from 
fifty to two hundred dollars a week in six months.” 
When she read these she went into her room 
and cried. They had meant nothing to her so 
long as he took them lightly; now that he applied 
his whole mind to them and sat absently dreaming 
of them, they seemed blasphemous. But she 
dared not complain; she had no remedy to offer. 

In a little while—after the baby was a few 
months old—he began to bring home news of cer¬ 
tain results from all this energy and absorption. 
His salary took a sudden jump. He was “meet¬ 
ing clients” continually, doing executive work. 
Soon, he told her, he would have a small office to 
himself. She simulated pleasure at these an¬ 
nouncements, but she felt none. Every triumph 
of that sort meant a surrender of himself. She 
even resented the care he had begun to take in 
his clothes and his hair-cuts, the change in his 
style of dress. 

The ugliness of the little apartment in a build¬ 
ing which held perhaps fifty tiresome families, 
the dreary parade of bourgeois virtues, and fourth 
or fifth rate finery, the strident female voices in 
the street and halls, the newness of everything one 
touched and looked at, the lack of shadows and 
mystery and ease, the pervasive, obvious travail 



BLINDFOLD 203 

for money—all these things were to Moira an 
education in American life which her youth had 
escaped. She disliked them, but she regarded 
them, because they were strange to her, with a de¬ 
tached, half-amused curiosity. 

To Miles, however, they were a return to the 
hated past—from just such a street in Cincinnati 
he had fled in horror years before. She saw that 
it really involved him; that daily, as it were, he 
had to brush its overwhelming effect from his 
clothes and from his mind. It was she who was 
putting him through all this. . . . And it was only 
an added irony that Miles, junior, turned out 
such a satisfactory child, normal and vigorous 
and good-tempered. It did not improve matters 
any that he deserved this sacrifice, for with every 
new fascination he exerted, every delightful char¬ 
acteristic he exhibited, the subjection of all their 
hopes to his demands became more complete. . . . 

Three years passed this way, and though the 
affairs of the Harlindew family went on quite as 
ever in outward appearance, much had happened 
underneath to both. 

In the first place she had learned that a child 
was not a temporary encumbrance, one that she 
could throw off in a year or two for outside work. 
If certain of its wants diminished with its growth, 
others increased, and the habit of being an at¬ 
tendant mother became fixed. She had had to 


204 BLINDFOLD 

.abandon her plan of returning to offices. Cheap 
servant girls and the risk run in trusting them 
worried her too much as it was. She became as 
helpless a house-person as the scores of other 
young mothers in her teeming block. 

With the relinquishment of this notion came 
the gradual realization that they might never be 
able to take up again that shoulder to shoulder in¬ 
dependence which had seemed so fine while it 
lasted. Miles from now on was the provider— 
she and her child the dependents. She discov¬ 
ered that he had seen this more clearly than she 
from the beginning. 

He ceased to take an interest in himself at all. 
His mind settled into a hopeless groove of dogged, 
disinterested work. To see him pick up a book 
and lay it aside was a gesture that came to hold 
a veritable sense of tragedy for her. To watch 
the effect of a fine play upon him was pathetic. 
While its beauty filled him with happiness, he 
dared not allow himself to be lifted too far into 
that rarified atmosphere. He ventured no opin¬ 
ions about any of the hundreds of stimulating per¬ 
sonalities who were coming up on the horizon of 
culture everywhere. Poetry he spoke of with 
whimsical condescension, even with contempt. It 
seemed to him an impudent excrescence, a mean¬ 
ingless dream that had no right to existence in a 
life of reality. 

All this came more swiftly than she knew, oc- 



BLINDFOLD 


205 


cupied as she was with the absorbing bit of life 
under her care. In three years she thought she 
scarcely knew Miles. The poems he had shown, 
her that night before the baby’s coming were 
often in her hands, though she dared not mention 
them to him. They were as fine as they had been 
then. Could this plodding man—who loved her 
still with a desperate, clinging love, a love, as it 
seemed, that was the breath of his life—be the 
same man who had written them? And was it 
possible that he must stop that divine occupation 
for no other reason than that three people had 
to live? The future seems short when life is 
meaningless and tiresome, and we become seized 
with a fierce impatience. Moira fought against a 
feeling that they were old and life was declining 
to its end. . . . 

An ominous fact was apparent. In spite of 
Harlindew’s devotion to work at the office he was 
achieving very little. He had reached a certain 
point and come to a standstill. His salary, large 
according to the ideas with which he had begun, 
was a dwindling insufficiency when it came to pay¬ 
ing their bills. He was beginning to be afraid 
that he might never go farther. She remembered 
now a saying that Barcroft had repeated to her: 
“Push may start behind, but it’s got brains beat 
all hollow in the end.” He was referring to the 
kind of brains Miles had, theoretic and literary. 
Miles himself tried to explain his predicament in 



206 


BLINDFOLD 


words of much the same import. There was a 
*‘point of saturation,’’ he said, in salaries and 
advancement, unless you “got outside and went 
after the business.” Apparently that was what 
he could not do. 

Af the same time, an incredible number of new 
expenses, roundly chargeable to the item named 
“baby” had absorbed all their early savings ex¬ 
cept a few hundred dollars, which she jealously 
kept—not so much in fear of an emergency, as 
with the hope that it might be the magic key to 
open the door to some way out of their life. But 
she went into this treasure to buy Miles decent 
business suits. They were both behind in similar 
comforts and vanities. 

Harlindew seemed to resent any invasion of his 
evenings, to prefer to sit with her and his 
thoughts. Yet in reality he was full of an enor¬ 
mous restlessness to which he dared not surren¬ 
der. The office needed all his energy; he could not 
spend it. So he thought. . . . Moira would take 
the bored man out whenever her maid would stay, 
trying to revive the spirit of their old comrade¬ 
ship. It came to life only in rare flashes. 

Her twenty-eighth year passed. She found her¬ 
self with more freedom on her hands now, and 
she obtained work from Elsie Jennings which 
brought in a few dollars a week. She was not 
sure which feeling was uppermost in Miles, his 
pleasure at seeing the money or his disgust 


BLINDFOLD 207 

at finding her painting silly gift cards. Her paint¬ 
ing, the fact that she had always kept it up to 
some extent, was his consolation, a vicarious sub¬ 
stitute for his own emptiness. . . . But the money 
made them more comfortable. 

Then she discovered that she was going to have 
another baby. He took the announcement cas¬ 
ually, even with a joke. 

“By Jove, my dear,’’ he said, “I’m succeeding 
in something, anyway.” 

He sat down and chuckled to himself. Three 
things had struck him as very funny. One was 
that he had never in his life pictured himself as a 
prolific father—like his own father; another was 
that he would be thirty-seven that week—and the 
third that he had come home to tell Moira his sal¬ 
ary had been cut. 

She dropped quickly, beseechingly beside him, 
disliking the sound of his laugh. 

“What’s the matter, darling, is it too much?” 

He put his arms across her shoulders in an ac¬ 
customed gesture. 

“No, no, dear. How absurd. I’m as glad as I 
can be.” 

He laughed again, attempting naturalness, and 
ruffled his hair with a sudden motion of his hand. 
But she felt the husband slipping from her grasp, 
turning defiantly before her eyes into the vagrant 
poet. . . • 


XXI 


They moved again, the landlord uptown having 
raised the rent at the expiration of their lease. 
The new place was in two large, bare rooms four 
stories up, lighted by gas, and without any kitchen 
except a small gas stove in a corner and some 
shelves concealed by a wall-board screen. There 
was a dilapidated bathroom, and a roof above 
where she could take the children in good weather. 
The place was in the Italian quarter and was 
cheap. The move seemed a logical one to Moira, 
for it brought them down in the social scale. If 
they were to be poor, it was better to live with 
the poor than with the pretentious. And the Ital¬ 
ian section was in the Village, of which they had 
both become incurably fond, and where for many 
reasons they felt most comfortable. 

The house was managed by an Italian woman 
named Eespetti, who had once done odd jobs of 
sewing for Moira and for whom she felt a strong 
liking. Mrs. Respetti had appeared to be quite 
overjoyed to see her again, delighted to hear of 
her marriage and her children, and had offered to 
help her look after them when she could. Her 
■willingness in this regard w^as the deciding factor 

in Moira’s choice of the house. 

208 


BLINDFOLD 209 

She had not been installed there more than a 
few weeks when Miles finally lost his job outright, 
an event she had anticipated almost any day since 
before the birth of her little girl. He made ef¬ 
forts to obtain work of the same kind, but unsuc¬ 
cessfully. He got books for review. He did what 
ever came along. One day he brought her a check 
signed by his father. He began shortly after¬ 
wards to be somewhat worse than idle, and sought 
forgetfulness of his troubles in a way to increase 
them. 

Moira had lived to see three men in him: the 
skylarking poet, the dogged misfit in business, and 
finally the self-drugged and nearly self-convinced 
failure. And still the vision of the first one 
haunted her and she hoped to bring it back to life. 

Left to herself, she made friendships in the Vil¬ 
lage and built up her own income to fairly re¬ 
spectable proportions. She was, at least, pre¬ 
served from downright anxiety about the children. 
In her youth at Thornhill, had she witnessed the 
privations and makeshifts which now made up 
her life she would have thought them a chapter out 
of some incredible tale of human misfortune. 

i 

One night when she had waited late for Miles 
and he had not come, she went to Sophie’s 
Kitchen. 

This was a dimly lighted little restaurant, with 
two rows of board tables down each wall, and an 
exotically foreign air, where the food was well- 



210 


BLINDFOLD 


flavoured and not so expensive as in most of the 
show places of the section. She was very fond 
of Sophie, the proprietress, a whole-souled 
woman, discriminating in her intimates, with a 
soft, pleasing voice, and remarkably long, narrow 
hazel eyes. 

As Moira seated herself at one of the tables she 
was conscious of a fashionable party across the 
room. Such people were not unusual in Sophie’s 
and she paid little attention to them. She saw 
the handsome proprietress in the open pantry at 
the back of the room and waved to her with a cry 
of greeting. Sophie replied by calling her name. 
Immediately afterward, Moira looked up to see 
a man coming toward her from the group she had 
spotted upon entering. He reached her table and 
thrust out his hand. 

“Well, Bob Blaydon!” she cried. 

“Moira.” 

She had recognized him at once, but she looked 
him over more carefully as he sat down opposite 
her. He was stouter. She found herself experi¬ 
encing a sensation she had never known before, 
that of meeting a youthful companion grown ma¬ 
ture in her absence, one she was fond of. It wasn’t 
such an extraordinary sensation. It might have 
been only a few days ago when she was seeing 
Rob constantly. Nothing happened to people at 
all. Perhaps his face had changed a little, but 
whatever change there was she would have ex- 


PLINDFOLD 211 

pected. Yes, she felt he was an even more wicked 
and human Eob than before. 

“I’ll tell you what, Moira,” he went on at once. 
“I don’t care what you’ve got on hand to-night, 
you’ve got to spend the evening with me. If you 
will wait just a minute I’ll get away from these 
people on some pretext. I’ve simply got to talk 
to you, Moira. What do you say?” 

“Go ahead, Eob, if you want to. I’d love it,” 
she replied with unaffected pleasure. 

He came back in a few moments. 

“Evidently they are used to your whims,” she 
said. “They don’t seem to mind.” 

“Forget ’em,” he replied, with a clipped ruth¬ 
lessness she remembered well. 

The two women had in fact glanced at her 
curiously and critically, but she did not care. 
They were certainly a very smart party. She 
wondered what they would think if they knew that 
she, too, not so many years ago, had worn the 
clothes they were wearing and cultivated their 
dry, sophisticated smiles. It appeared to her now 
a diluted and uninteresting sophistication. . . . 

“Moira,” he was saying, “I’ve got to know all 
about you. I’m hungry for information. You 
don’t look any younger. But you don’t look any 
the worse, either. What wouldn’t they give back 
home to be with me now! ’ ’ 

“Eob, it’s good to see you!” 

“Honest? Well, I’m certainly glad you feel 


212 BLINDFOLD 

that way. Still, I always knew you’d be just the 
same. Why did you do it, Moira! Why in the 
devil did you do it!” 

“Do what!” 

“Oh, all that—rot. It was silly, Moira. You’re 
one of us, to this day. Always will be, you know. 
Who cared!” 

She laughed a few notes of warm laughter that 
was still a clear stream free from the sediment of 
bitterness. 

“I never think of that any more. Perhaps it 
was silly. But I’ve been happier.” 

“H’m.” She was conscious that his eyes 
searched her face, and rather proud that what he 
found there would make it impossible to pity her. 
“H’m,” he repeated, “well, maybe you have. I 
guess you know a lot.” 

“How are they, Rob! I’d like to see them all. 
I really would. Goodness, it’s been ten years! 
How’s Hal!” 

There was no challenge in the tone—it was just 
a natural question. 

“You haven’t heard about Hal! Well, Hal is 
in China. Been there for six years and I reckon 
he won’t come home. You know he looked high 
and low for you—thought he was going out of his 
mind. There were difficulties, you understand, 
or perhaps you counted on them. Fear of pub¬ 
licity—truth leaking out—abduction—shouting 


BLINDFOLD 


213 


your name from the house-tops. But he wore 
himself out. Then one night he came home, and 
broke down. Well, he told me he guessed it was 
better the way it turned out—that he admired 
you and knew you’d never be moved. Thought 
after what happened you’d never feel right. My 
God, you high and mighty idealists!” 

“Is he happy?” 

“I don’t know. Hal and I were always so con¬ 
founded different, it’s hard for me to get him. He 
wasn’t cut out to be happy or the opposite. He’s 
turned out one of those quiet, square-jawed 
gumps, Moira. I met him in Paris two years ago, 
and we had a rotten dull time of it. I suppose 
he’ll mope around the Orient the rest of his life, 
working for corporations, get richer and richer 
and marry somebody’s sister equally rich. Now, 
I’m another breed of coyote. I’m always satisfied 
when I have a clean shirt on. It’s the thought¬ 
less life I like.” 

“I’m sorry Hal isn’t happy,” said Moira rue¬ 
fully. 

“I wouldn’t be sorry about him!” snapped Bob. 
“Damn it, Moira, I don’t say you weren’t clever 
as the devil. But if Hal had been me I’d have 
found you.” 

“You’re the same Rob!” she laughed. “You 
know, of course, you’re the only one of them I 
could have run into this way and talked to com- 


214 


BLINDFOLD 


fortably. And the others—how are they! Your 
father I”—she dropped her voice—‘ 4 read about 
in the papers.” 

“Poor Dad. He must have felt he was buncoed 
sometime or other in his life. He tried to over¬ 
crowd the last few years. I think Aunt Mathilda 
felt he went off about in time. . . . Those two old 
women—I mean your mother, Moira, and my aunt. 
It’s a curious friendship that’s grown up between 
them. They keep that big house together and 
think mostly about cows and flowers—and old 
times.” 

She did not reply to that nor look at him di¬ 
rectly. She was glad when he burst out in a more 
immediate vein. 

“Well, what do you say to a night of it! I find 
it’s a dull world, Moira. You may have more 
money than I have, and it may bore you to do the 
bright lights . . . but that’s my form of entertain¬ 
ment. However, I’m only going to do what 
you say. It’s your night. But I don’t imagine 
you want me to take you to church! ’ ’ 

“I haven’t money,” she answered, smiling. “I 
never have a night of it, Rob. I’d love one.” 

“Good! Come on.” 

“No. I want you to wait here while I change. 
These clothes won’t do.” 

“Just as you say. But can’t I take you—wher¬ 
ever it is you go to change your clothes!” 

“What’s the use!” she queried, tentatively, as 


BLINDFOLD 215 

much to herself as to him. “No, I’d rather you 
wouldn , t. ,, 

“Just as you say.” 

“Rob, you’re a dear. In fifteen minutes I’ll be 
back. Meantime you talk to Sophie. Oh, Sophie,” 
she called, and while she waited for Sophie to 
come, she added, “Sophie will like you fine. She 
might even put you on the poor list.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Sophie has a sliding scale of prices. But 
that’s a secret.” 

Moira’s one black evening gown was rather old, 
but she felt extraordinarily happy as she stepped 
out of the restaurant a little later on his arm. 
The sweet, leathery smell of the taxicab’s interior 
held almost a new shiver for her. How long it 
had been since she had smelled that with a good 
conscience and seen the lights of the little squares 
and the upper Avenue slip by like a single glitter¬ 
ing chain, to the slinky whirr of wheels. She 
looked forward to the evening for itself—its ad¬ 
venture in colours—and for Rob. She begged 
him not to ask her questions, not until they had 
had a few dances and found a quiet corner after 
the fun. 

“I see,” he said. “You’re starved for a fling— 
even if you won’t let on.” 

“I am—with you.” 

“No kidding? But I guess you always did like 
me pretty well. You used to be my only Cham- 


216 


BLINDFOLD 


pion. And I needed one often. Well, I’m an un¬ 
repentant sinner.” 

After dining they took in a part of the Follies 
and then went to dance. It was the same, she 
found, here as it had been at home. Whenever 
they stopped, at the Tom-Tom and La Fleur de 
Nuit, he was known and served like the old-timers. 
She begged him to go on drinking while she 
skipped, and he did so without apology, explain¬ 
ing that it was his forte. She wondered at his 
power of absorbing continuously without the 
trembling of an eyelash. It pleased her to meet 
admiring eyes, and be asked to dance by his 
friends. 

He steered her afterward to a place furnished 
like a very intimate club, where they sat in deep 
armchairs under dim lights and had scrambled 
eggs and bacon on little French stands. There 
she took a long Scotch highball and told him some¬ 
thing of herself. 

‘ 4 Moira,” he said. “It’s a weird sensation to 
listen to such a tale from you. You belong in this 
sort of thing.” He indicated the too elegant 
room. 

She rose to go. 

‘ 4 It’s better fun to feel you belong in the whole 
crazy world. I wonder if you do f ” 

She laughed and then added with a sudden 
burst of bravado: “Rob, I’d like to take you home 


BLINDFOLD 217 

and let you see my kids. I’d like to to-night. 
Could you come?” 

“Yep. I get a train out of here at nine in the 
morning and there’s more than six hours to make 
it.” 

She felt it was an odd experience for him climb¬ 
ing up the dark, gas-lit stairs. She led him back 
to the cribs with candelabra in her hand, and 
he looked longest at the blond-haired little Jo¬ 
anna, seeing in her broad, upturned, warm face 
some misty resemblance to his earliest vision of 
her mother. 

“They’re great kids, Moira. But I won’t bluff 
—I like ’em all best when they’re asleep.” 

They came out into the shadowy, haphazard 
studio, and she knew he felt uneasy and shocked 
at her surroundings. 

“Well,” he said coolly, “of course you’re going 
to let me help you. I’ve got plenty—more than 
is good for me—and nobody has more right to it 
than you. If you say so, I’ll ditch that train to¬ 
morrow and have you out of here by noon with 
the children, into a comfortable place.” 

“No, sir,” she laughed. 

“But, my God!” he protested, and then added 
severely. 4 ‘ Moira, I told you early in the evening 
you looked none the worse for everything. . . . 
But you do—you look peaked. You’re fagged.” 

“Who wouldn’t be, after a night of it with you! 



218 BLINDFOLD 

No, no, you dear boy. But we’ll have a night of it 
again.” 

“Thanks for that.” 

“And only with you, Bob,” she continued, with 
emphasis. He caught the hint that he was to keep 
the secret of her whereabouts. 

“Just as you say. I shan’t talk. But I’m going 
to get you out of this, somehow, sometime. I 
can’t tell you where to reach me, to-night, except 
that Thornhill does, in a roundabout way. I’m 
going to locate in the East in a few days and you’ll 
hear from me. I’m going now. There’s no use 
talking, Moira, this pulls me down”—he made a 
gesture with his hand about the room and then 
added apologetically—“Don’t be offended. It’s 
just because it happens to be you.” 

As he stood awkwardly, with hat and stick under 
one arm, he took out a long box of cigarettes and 
threw it on the table. 

“At least let me give you those,” he said with 
a sheepish grin. 

“Rob, please don’t worry about me,” she 
pleaded. She stepped toward the table to take a 
cigarette from the box he had thrown down, but 
his outstretched arm stopped her. 

“Here,” he said, offering his opened case, 
“take one of these. . . . Moira, you’re the woman 
who makes all my conceptions about the sex go 
blooey. Damn it, I wish I were Harold. I wish 
I had some prior rights in the matter.” 


BLINDFOLD 219 

“You’ve more rights this minute than Hal,” 
she said firmly. 

After he had gone she sat puffing smoke into 
the dim upper reaches of the room, and watching 
the petals of candlelight waver and dip. What 
fun it had been! Life held strange meetings. 
Perhaps it held many more for her. She was a 
little unhappy, dissatisfied . . . the place did look 
dismal, unclean, comfortless. 

In the morning she found Miles pacing the 
studio waiting for her to rise. He w T as nervous 
and evasive, but in better shape than she had ex¬ 
pected to see him. Obviously, he had done his 
recovering elsewhere, and bathed while she slept. 
She kissed him, her quarrel with him lost in 
pleasant afterthoughts of the night before, but he 
seemed troubled and strange. At breakfast, he 
suddenly asked: 

i ‘What the devil is this?” 

“What?” 

He tossed a Pall Mall cigarette box across the 
table and she opened it. The silver paper was 
folded carefully over the top. Between it and the 
bottom layer of cigarettes lay five one hundred 
dollar bills. 

“It’s a long story,” she said, recovering from 
her surprise. Then she told him about Rob. He 
stood up to go after she had finished. 

“Well,” he said, with some embarrassment, 
“I do hope you feel it’s a perfectly natural thing 


220 BLINDFOLD 

for a fellow to open a box of cigarettes lying 
around on a table. I mean to say—” 

“Nonsense. I should have done it myself.’’ 

Miles left her, to go to his accumulated work, 
bitterly, she knew, and more completely convinced 
of his uselessness. She sat down to try to think 
out what was to be done. The owner of the 
five hundred had taken his train long ago. She 
did not know where to reach him, and if she 
did, it would be downright mean to send the money 
back. She remembered how he had prevented 
her from opening the box before he had left 
her. The money was not there by accident. Rob 
was her schoolboy friend. Perhaps she was only 
giving herself an excuse, but what good would 
her self-righteousness do to temper the hurt she 
knew he would feel? She would accept his gift 
simply and with thanks. Besides, she had a plan. 
On the children’s account, on Miles’, on her own, 
she had long been wanting to put it into execu¬ 
tion. This money would enable her to do so, 
beautifully and without a hitch. 


XXII 


In the open country near a southern village of 
Connecticut, not over a brisk morning’s walk to 
the Sound, sat a smallish farmhouse which was 
probably a century old. It was an innocent and 
ordinary enough looking house from the road. It 
topped a swell of land that was somewhat higher 
than its immediate surroundings and bare of large 
trees except for a single magnificent elm half way 
between the house and the road. The lawn was 
allowed to grow wild, but nearer the house and 
covering the approach to its graceful old doorway 
were several shrubs in more or less cultivated 
condition placed on a few feet of clipped sod. In 
the spring the lawn and the fields which rolled 
out downward from the house were thickly starred 
with buttercups whose tiny yellow bowls glis¬ 
tened like lacquered buttons in the sun. Later the 
same meadows turned to a waving lake of red 
clover. 

Potter Osprey, when upbraided by his friends 
for not making more of his handful of acres, de¬ 
clared he was no gardener. He could neither 
adorn nature nor gain his feed from her by his 
own hands, for she was a wild beast whose moods 

and colours and contours he had struggled with 

221 


222 


BLINDFOLD 


all his life, and there was no quarter between 
them. To all offers to prettify her in his imme¬ 
diate neighbourhood he was politely deaf. He 
wanted her rugged and plain as his plastic, solid 
canvases liked to interpret her, and that way he 
could love her as one loves a worthy foe. 

On the house itself he had lavished more care. 
Eight years of his own proprietorship had made 
it, without any great loss of its ancient character, 
a place of personal charm inside. In the rear the 
hill fell sharply from the foundation, and here he 
had built up a broad concrete terrace, looking 
northward to an unbroken view of horizon and 
low hills. Above the terrace for ten or twelve 
feet in height and almost as wide, rose a vertical 
sheet of heavy, transparent glass in narrow 
panels, and this gave light to a large room, which 
had been made by knocking out walls and upper 
flooring so that half of it was two stories high. 
The house practically consisted of this room, a 
cellar under it, and some small bedrooms above. 
Outhouse and kitchen stepped away to the west. 

From Osprey’s north terrace could be seen a 
smaller house on the eastern slope, nestling in a 
very old, gnarled and worn-out orchard. Some of 
its trees reminded one of those anatomical designs 
in physiological books; they were half bare- 
branched skeleton and half green, waving body. 

To the larger house Moira Harlindew came one 
morning in answer to an advertisement in a New 


BLINDFOLD 223 

York paper, describing a ‘ 4 small, furnished house 
in the country with conveniences.’’ 

She was admitted by the painter himself, a man 
of medium height, who showed his fifty years 
more in his figure, his careless gait, and the way 
he wore his old clothes, than in the face, which 
was of no definite age, so Moira thought. What 
lines had been worn upon it made the man seem 
more youthful. The eyes were candid and re¬ 
poseful, but extremely responsive to passing 
moods. This she detected in his look of anxiety 
as he first opened the door for her, and in the evi¬ 
dent relief that followed his swift inspection. The 
mouth, under a gray wisp of moustache that 
tended to turn upwards at the ends, slanted a bit 
so that more than half of the smile was on one 
side. There was a suggestion of the satirical in 
it. Yet Moira found the face, on the whole, a 
pleasant one to look at, especially when he had 
recovered his composure and was welcoming her. 

“Come in,” he said. “What can I do for 
you?” 

“I’ve come to see the house for rent.” 

“Good. You’re early. I hardly expected any 
answers to-day before noon. It’s quite a little 
way to come from the city, you know. By the 
way. I’m at my breakfast. Suppose you come 
along and sit down while I finish. Do you mind?” 

He led her into the studio and she sank into a 
large chair, a little tired after the long, warm walk 


224 


BLINDFOLD 


from the station. She felt instantly and com¬ 
pletely happy. The big room, with its cool, even 
light, its smell of wood and paint, and its thou¬ 
sand and one objects familiar and dear to her 
trade, drove everything else from her mind, even 
the anxiety she had felt lest the place be taken— 
for it was Monday morning and all day Sunday 
had elapsed since she had seen the advertisement. 
He noticed her fatigue and glanced at her dusty 
shoes. 

“You’ve walked up,” he exclaimed, surprised. 
“Well, perhaps you will join me.” He sat down 
before a low table which gleamed with silver and 
yellow china. “Coffee? My morning tipple is 
tea, but Nana always has some coffee because she 
loves it herself.” 

“If you really have it,” said Moira, “I’d like 
some coffee.” 

A large, impassive negress soon served her. 

“It isn’t much of a house you’re going to see,” 
he went on. “I call it the orchard bungalow and 
it is nearly as decrepit as the orchard itself. But 
it will shed the rain.” 

“And it’s not taken?” asked Moira warmly. 

“Well, no—not exactly. But I’m afraid it’s 
too—well, unpretentious for you.” 

“It couldn’t be that,” she laughed. As he fin¬ 
ished his toast her gaze went on embracing the 
room with frank pleasure, and she was aware he 
took sly glances at her. 


BLINDFOLD 


225 


“Do you paint?” he asked suddenly. 

Moira had been afraid of the question. Though 
her host had only given his last name she 
had read it on pictures in the studio, and knew 
now that he was an American painter of reputa¬ 
tion whose work she had worried over at various 
exhibitions. She felt extremely humble, but her 
fear arose from the suspicion that a successful 
painter might object to having irresponsible and 
immature dabblers running about in his near 
neighbourhood. She could not hide in the imme¬ 
diate safety of a lie. Eventually that would be 
found out, though it tempted her. 

“I’m just a student,” she replied, and went on 
quickly, “but the real reason I want a country 
place is because I’ve two young children. Do you 
mind that? I’m sure they will not bother you.” 

“Not at all,” he said cordially. “On the con¬ 
trary . . . However,” he added, rising, “I think 
we had better look at this humble dwelling be¬ 
fore you grow too enthusiastic, my dear young 
lady. ’ ’ 

As Moira had entered the place, her mind’s eye 
had pictured the four-year-old Miles playing 
among those buttercups, and learning things he 
might never get to know if he grew much older 
in the city. Now every step confirmed her in the 
desire to live here at any cost. The nostalgia for 
Thornhill which she had felt in many a solitary 
hour during these last ten years, together with a 


226 BLINDFOLD 

flood of early memories, swept over her. The 
orchard, upon which a few apple blossoms lin¬ 
gered, was enchantingly old and weird. Standing 
in the high grass beneath it one could see a pat¬ 
tern of winding stone fences crisscrossing the 
fields, and up a near-by hill danced three pale 
birches like a trio of white-legged girls with green 
veils trailing about them. Even a bit of decayed 
brown board by the path made her sentimental. 
She wanted to run after a butterfly or to lie full 
length in the grass of the meadow, letting the sun 
drink her up. . . . 

The house was small, but a moment’s specula¬ 
tion and mental rearrangement convinced her 
that it was adequate. She and the genial owner 
found themselves making plans together for the 
comfort of the Harlindew family. 

“I don’t see what you are going to do with your 
maid,” said he, 6 ‘unless she sleeps on the couch 
out here in the sitting room.” 

“I sha’n’t have a maid,” Moira replied, and he 
looked at her with another of his glances of won¬ 
dering curiosity. 

“But,” he began, and then stopped, thinking 
better of what he had intended to say. “Well, 
there’s my Nana. She often has time lying heavy 
on her hands and she doesn’t object to an occa¬ 
sional extra fee. No doubt she can help you.” 

“Oh, that will be splendid,” she cried. The 
suggestion did solve a minor problem in her mind, 


BLINDFOLD 


227 


but she bad no patience just now with minor prob¬ 
lems. 1 ‘ I love the old furniture you have in here. * ’ 

“Most of it was here when I came, in the house 
up above. I made one room out of three when I 
built the studio, and these are the handful of 
pieces I could not use. If you haven’t enough, 
there are a few more odds and ends stored away.” 

“You’re going to let me take it, then?” asked 
Moira breathlessly. 

He seemed surprised at the question, as though 
the matter had been settled between them, and 
then laughed. 

“I’ll tell you the truth now, Mrs. Harlindew. 
There have been several other applicants but I 
put them off somehow—I didn’t like any of them. 
. . . But!” he exclaimed suddenly—“but my dear 
girl! Well, well!” 

She was crying after all, as she had feared she 
would in the orchard, ten minutes before. Tears 
that she could not keep back rolled down her 
smiling cheeks. . . . 


i 


xxm 


Moika’s hope had been that their move to the 
country would bring Miles to his senses. With 
nothing to do but rest and lose himself in the 
beauty and peace of outdoors, with not even the 
responsibility, for some months at least, to earn 
any money, she confidently believed he would drop 
the habits which had regained their hold upon him 
of late, get possession of his impulse to work, and 
begin to write the things of which she dreamed he 
was capable. And in the beginning each day after 
they arrived confirmed her hope. He seemed to 
cast heavy burdens from his shoulders and his 
mind, to love spending hours with the children, 
romping and making the place merry with their 
laughter and his. From time to time he wandered 
off alone with his pockets stuffed with paper, 
boyishly promising great results, or stayed up 
with the lamp at night. When they had been 
there no more than ten days it seemed already a 
long time ago that their lives had changed and 
taken a turn for the better. She was for that ten 
days serenely happy. 

Then the country began to pall on Miles. He 

grew restless and evasive; at breakfast he would 

hint at various reasons for going to New York. 

When their second week end came around he man- 

228 


BLINDFOLD 229 

aged a convincing excuse and disappeared with 
a small handbag full of over-night clothing. 

Moira’s heart sank at this unexpected turn of 
affairs, and she spent the days in his absence giv¬ 
ing way to more real despair than she had ever 
known with him. This time she had done her 
best, done what a little while ago she would have 
thought impossible, and she had failed. . . . 

He seemed to come back passionately eager to 
see her, and so long as he did that she could only 
surrender to him and see in him still her lover 
and her first lover, her lover for all time. But 
these waves of passion died away; her presence 
and the children’s began to irk him in a day or 
two, sometimes in a few hours, and it soon ap¬ 
peared to her that he regarded a week as an in¬ 
terminable visit. 

She set herself to observing him, to studying 
his chance remarks, and for the first time a genu¬ 
ine doubt of his fidelity oppressed her. There 
was nothing tangible, except his trips to the city, 
to justify this suspicion, and these would have 
been inadequate despite his evasions. She could 
quite naturally think of him as being restless, as 
wanting to go away, without dreaming that he 
would belie her faith in him. The suspicion of 
infidelity came before the evidence, but once the 
suspicion was lodged in her mind, the evidence, all 
unconsciously furnished by Miles, piled up by 
little and little. 


230 


BLINDFOLD 


She saw that this warmth of love-making with 
which he returned to her did not last an hour. 
Bitter thoughts assailed her. Evidently he was 
not always successful with his hypothetical sweet¬ 
heart or sweethearts and was driven back to his 
wife. She could not keep fantastic exaggerations 
out of her head, though in her sober moments she 
told herself that the truth, if probably serious, 
was far less florid than she imagined. 

Nevertheless, there grew upon her an increas¬ 
ing repugnance toward his advances. She made 
no issue of it. She did not want conflict. He 
was very appealing, very hard on her sym¬ 
pathies, very skilful in inventions. She could 
not quickly forget that he had suffered and strug¬ 
gled while he still loved her. But her inescapable 
conclusion, reached in hours of cold reflection, 
was that they were parting; that sooner or later 
an end would come. She determined not to invite 
it so long as her pride was not sacrificed; to wait 
for it sensibly and coolly. 

Another explanation of Miles’ conduct brought 
a curious sort of consolation and corrective. This 
was that he simply wanted to be free—but did 
not have the strength. The opportunity had been 
placed in his way to leave, and, feeling himself 
ultimately unequal to marriage and its burdens 
and limitations, he believed he ought to take it. 
His love still held him tenuously to her and the 
children, his sentiment for their past together, 


BLINDFOLD 231 

his need for a woman’s support—whatever it was 
—and he could not find the courage to make the 
break. He had probably been strengthened in 
entertaining this purpose by the knowledge that 
somebody had turned up from Thornhill, and she 
would be taken care of. Much as that base notion 
offended her, this last theory was frankly pleas¬ 
ing. It was better than the thought of betrayal 
with another woman. 

By the time she had reached this state of en¬ 
lightenment she was so skilled in reading poor 
Miles’ motives that she felt as though she had 
acquired supernatural powers of clairvoyance. 
The summer was more than half gone. 

But she had not thought exclusively of Miles. 
She had the children to care for and teach a whole 
new set of fascinating things, and she had her 
painting. The opportunity presented by these 
untrammelled days was not to be lost over heart¬ 
burnings, and a new power and certainty had come 
to her. She wasted less time carrying her at¬ 
tempts to the last degree of finish. She was try¬ 
ing by experiment after experiment to get the feel 
and solidity of the earth and to express her warm 
daily contact with it. 

She had been very timid toward Osprey where 
painting was concerned. She had resolved never 
to speak to him about it and to keep out of his 
way while she was at it. One ought not to expect 
to rent the cottage of a famous painter and have 


232 


BLINDFOLD 


advice thrown in. But it was he who sought her 
in the orchard one morning and made comments 
for which she was grateful, because she under¬ 
stood them and could profit by them, and also be¬ 
cause they were not uncomplimentary. 

“Most of us,” he said, “gamble frightfully in 
choosing art as a career. That’s why there are so 
many hopeless artists. We mistake an urge for a 
talent, and the devil of it is there is no sure way 
of knowing whether we’re on the right road or 
not. But I think you are. In the first place you 
have the steady enthusiasm and not just mere 
plugging industry. In the second place you are a 
self-teacher. Everybody worth a hang is that.” 

They w T ere the first really golden words she had 
ever heard, and she was certain afterward that 
simply hearing them had improved her work 
miraculously—made her surer of the knowledge 
she had gained and helped her to discard excres¬ 
cences. 

Osprey had few visitors. Perhaps twice a year 
a gathering of extraordinary individuals with 
whom he had consorted at various periods and in 
many parts of the world crowded into the house, 
took possession of it, kept up a racket until morn¬ 
ing and departed, leaving him with a few more 
intimate cronies, some to recover from the effects 
and others simply to prolong the reunion. These 
entertainments occurred usually in the early 
spring or fall, the seasons of change when people 


BLINDFOLD 


233 


come together most spontaneously. And they 
were spontaneous. He had no use for set affairs. 

On rare occasions women drove out to see him, 
for luncheon or tea; and he himself went to town 
about once a month, seldom remaining longer 
than over night. He seemed to have cultivated 
frot only the love of solitude, but the power to en¬ 
joy it for long periods. 

There was one visitor, however, who arrived 
often. Moira saw his heavy blue roadster drawn 
up beside the lawn three times during the first 
month of her stay, and she wondered who the im¬ 
pressive man was, with short grey curly hair, and 
the easy bearing of accomplishment. She was not 
surprised to learn later that he was somebody— 
no less a person, in fact, than Emmet Roget, the 
producer, a man who was both a power in the busi¬ 
ness phase of the theatre and an artistic radical 
in his own right. 

The friendship between these two men appeared 
to be less extraordinary now than it had been in 
past years, but it was still a friendship in which a 
certain inequality was apparent. The role of 
Roget toward Osprey, during three fourths of their 
adult lives, had been that of a detached but watch¬ 
ful guardian. A dozen years ago Osprey had 
been something of a riderless horse, a centre of 
explosions, the victim of unexpected mishaps and 
misunderstandings, constantly involved with a 
woman, and taking his affairs with desperate 


234 


BLINDFOLD 


seriousness, careless of his talent and his time. 
Much of this relationship he skilfully suggested 
to her himself, in his humorously philosophic mo¬ 
ments. 

As he put it, he was born somewhere between 
his thirty-eighth and his fortieth year, and began 
to live his life in a sense backward; for though 
he went on having experiences it was always some¬ 
thing in his life before his thirty-eighth year that 
he seemed to be living over in these experiences, 
and relishing where he previously had suffered. 
The actual occasion of the change had been a 
painful separation from the last of his devastating 
loves, and more or less complete celibacy since. 
The result was a fresh joy in work, a really enor¬ 
mous volume of production . . . peace and con¬ 
tentment and plenty. 

The life of Emmet Roget had been exactly the 
antithesis. He was penniless in his youth. No 
sooner had he reached New York—to which 
initial step Osprey had assisted him—than he be¬ 
gan to have means for his needs. At twenty-nine 
he left Europe, after having immersed himself in 
as much of French culture as an able young for¬ 
eigner can obtain with diligence and enthusiasm, 
and studied the beginnings of the German theatre 
movement. A season was spent directing a Den¬ 
ver ‘ 4 little theatre,’’ but the provinces offered too 
little future and freedom. Once more in New 
York, Roget was designing sets and directing pro- 


BLINDFOLD 


235 


ductions. In his late thirties he was instituting 
new methods into the theatre which were hailed 
and copied abroad. 

Many regarded Emmet Roget as primarily a 
‘'man for the future,” yet to him the present 
seemed invariably kind. Unlike his friend, noth- 
ing touched him; but whatever he touched gained 
from his personality, took on fascination and 
beauty. Hard at the core, immovable and unim¬ 
pressionable, he was yet acutely sensitive, capa¬ 
ble of profound appreciations, for music, for 
colour, for a scene, a woman—and surprisingly 
human in his contacts. No doubt it was this in¬ 
tuitive appreciation, coupled with early friend¬ 
ship, which had made him cling to Osprey through 
many hopeless seasons and experiments. 

The first two or three times that Roget visited 
him that summer, Osprey did not refer to his new 
tenants except casually. Later, however, when 
he had had a half dozen talks with Moira, he in¬ 
troduced the subject to his friend at the dinner 
table. 

“That’s rather a remarkable young woman I’ve 
got down there in the orchard,” he said. “Did I 
tell you that she painted?” 

“I believe so—something of the kind,” replied 
Roget. He had met with his share of disillusion¬ 
ment among his own proteges, and he was not 
given to more than passing interest in the mere 
fact that a young woman painted. 


236 


BLINDFOLD 


“Well,” pursued Osprey, “I've got something 
to show you after dinner.” 

When they had finished he led the producer to 
a picture on the studio wall and switched on a 
light he had put up to illuminate it. 

“That's one of hers,” he said. “I think there 
are extraordinarily good things in it as well as 
bad. At all events, I liked it so well I bought 
it.” 

Roget studied the picture for a moment, but 
without enthusiasm. 

“Yes,” he said. “Obviously you've influenced 
her already, or she's known your work for some 
time.” 

“I don't think it's so obvious,” protested the 
other. “There's personal insight in that model¬ 
ling, and it has a back to it. Anyway, she's 
young. Fact is, there's something really unusual 
about the girl. I fancy she had things her own 
way at one time. The marks are there, overlaid 
by experience since.” 

“Of course,” laughed Roget quietly, “it makes 
a difference if you know the young lady.” 

“Hang it, my dear fellow, the girl is poor. Has 
two children, and a husband who may be talented 
and may be a fool. But he's certainly no sup¬ 
port.” 

“Charity and art do not mix, old man.” 

“The hell they don't,” replied Osprey testily. 
“But as you say, one must see for oneself. You 


BLINDFOLD 


237 


are going to make Mrs. Harlindew’s acquaintance, 
and whatever you think of charity, you will buy a 
picture from her as a favour to me. Not too soon, 
you understand, and not too obtrusively. She 
shied at me frightfully when I bought this one. 
I had to tell her that I had made quite a collection 
of the work of promising beginners for reasons of 
my own.” 

Roget found his friend nearly always trans¬ 
parent. Ten years ago he would have said there 
was considerably more than the mere fervour of 
the artist in this championship. But he had since 
become acquainted with a wholly new side of the 
man, and it was difficult to believe him capable 
of losing his head over a pretty bride who hap¬ 
pened to rent his house. 

“You say she is married?” he contented him¬ 
self with asking, dryly. 

A flicker of humorous comprehension passed 
over the other’s face. 

“Yes,” he replied shortly, “but the fellow neg¬ 
lects her.” 

Roget’s manner became once more indulgent. 

“Well, I shall try to buy this picture. I don’t 
know what to do with it after I get it. There are 
mighty few pictures worth buying. Perhaps not 
more than twenty in the world.” 

He dismissed the subject and sat down at Os¬ 
prey’s piano. His study of the instrument had 
come late, in young manhood. Lacking any great 


238 


BLINDFOLD 


musical scholarship or conventional training, he 
nevertheless played whatever he had heard that 
pleased him, with extraordinary tenderness and 
effect. 


XXIV 


For Moira the summer grew increasingly fruit¬ 
ful, and, in a reflective way, full of satisfactions, 
despite the continued absences of Miles. A pro¬ 
found sympathy came over her, which she did not 
remember to have experienced before, for the 
average discontented wife, who had to endure this 
sort of thing with empty hands and no refuge of 
the spirit in which to lose herself. . . . That could 
never be the case with her. 

It is true that she would have been less serene 
were it not for the fact that she had found com¬ 
panionship that answered a real want. Osprey 
had none of the qualifications of the teacher, and 
his criticisms struck deep. If she had been 
younger and greener they might only have puz¬ 
zled and not helped her, but now she welcomed 
surgery and destruction. Her own hard years of 
unaided application rendered her capable of un¬ 
derstanding his language remarkably well, and 
she was ready to discard and forget everything 
she had ever known. 

Their discussions were often continued after 
brushes were laid aside. She accepted invitations 
to tea in the studio or sat on his terrace on warm 
nights after the children were asleep. The long 

239 


BLINDFOLD 


240 

drawn out culmination of her relationship to 
Miles had given her the habit of self-analysis, 
and she laughed somewhat over the appeal that 
Osprey made to her as a man. She could not 
deny that it was the same that originally had 
drawn her to her husband. She dealt here with 
a greater Miles, wiser and more experienced. 
Nevertheless, she sensed in him the type that was 
not self-sufficient, that required sympathy of a 
subtle kind, and required it, when found, with 
an intensity that in this case was beginning 
to prove hypnotic to her. Unquestionably Potter 
Osprey was gradually becoming a necessary part 
of her life, and this was not her fault but his. She 
had hinted at, more than revealed, the state of 
affairs between herself and Miles. It was impos¬ 
sible not to do so, appearances being what they 
were; and the older man’s complete understanding 
coupled with hesitation to advise, was a soothing 
remedy to her hurts. 

The attraction which was growing between her¬ 
self and Osprey was totally different from her 
feeling for his friend, Roget, with whom she had 
become acquainted. The distinguished producer 
treated her with bantering equality from the start. 
It was as if they recognized a likeness to each 
other in essential strength, and the hesitation, 
almost anxiety, which Roget had felt over the 
painter’s passionate adoption of Moira’s cause 
disappeared on knowing her. He began to think 


BLINDFOLD 


241 


of the whole affair as a pleasant and lasting alli¬ 
ance for his friend, of some sort, and he little 
doubted of what sort it would he. Obstacles there 
were, which he did not concern himself with. 
Once a possibility took life in Roget’s brain, ob¬ 
stacles did not exist. He had seen too many large 
ones swept aside. 

To Moira, the obstacles were more significant, 
and yet they had diminished amazingly in the last 
three months. The prospect that Osprey would 
take their friendship seriously did have about it a 
quality of dark adventure which made even her 
steady pulses jump uncomfortably. But to the 
young woman who sees her marriage being slowly 
broken up before her eyes, while she is helpless 
to restore it, everything is touched by the shimmer 
of madness. And she asked herself what could 
have been more mad, more out of all normal rea¬ 
son, than her whole life? Moreover, she had a 
firm support now, one that gave her the strength 
to adventure—her art. The intimation had visited 
her at last that she might triumph in it; and, 
having reached that certainty, she felt it a more 
present help than coffers heaped with gold. . . . 
The picture which Roget had tried to buy she 
laughingly refused to sell him, but he had coun¬ 
tered with a problem in stage design which he 
promised to accept if it offered a suggestion to 
work on. Here was a beginning, at least. 

Her children ... it was strange how she felt 



242 


BLINDFOLD 


toward them, how little she feared for them. Cer¬ 
tainly they were to be shielded, but also they were 
not to be deceived about the life into which they 
had been brought. The truth would not hurt them. 

It was late in September that Moira received 
the letter from Miles saying that he had left and 
would not return. The letter was a mixture of 
unhappy self-accusation, and charges against her 
for various shortcomings, chief of which ap¬ 
peared to be that she had become self-sufficient 
and had accepted assistance from others. She 
thought he might have spared her that, as well as 
the taunt about her preoccupation with Osprey. 
. . . She had expected a parting shot of some kind, 
yet when it came it was a painful blow, and she 
spent a week brooding over it and wholly beside 
herself. 

During this week Osprey saw nothing of her, 
and when she came up the hill one evening to join 
him, he revealed in his eagerness what the depri¬ 
vation had meant. He led her to a seat, fussed 
about her comfort and lighted her cigarette. 

“I’ve been ill,” she said. “I go off and hide 
when that happens, like an animal. Now I’m 
well.” 

“Ill?” he asked, disturbed. He reflected that 
he should have been less squeamish and forced a 
visit upon her. He had never done just that. In¬ 
vitations, dropped at chance meetings or at the 
end of discussions while they worked had been 


BLINDFOLD 243 

enough. This time he had gone a little further, 
approached her door on an impulse twice, hut 
stopped before making his presence known. 
“But,” he resumed, “Nana didn't tell me about 
your being ill. Did she take care of you?” 

Moira knew what was in his mind. While she 
had been ill, her husband had not been at home. 

“Well,” she confessed lightly, “ill is not 
strictly true. I've been just out of sorts. I had 
some news, but it doesn't matter.” 

“Good. I'm glad you're feeling better. Par¬ 
ticularly, as Nana tells me, you’re expecting a 
guest to-morrow.” 

“Yes, an old friend, a Mr. Blaydon. An old 
schoolmate, really, who has been very kind to 
us.” 

“I wonder if you wouldn't bring him and Mr. 
Harlindew to dinner to-morrow night? I shall be 
delighted to have you all; and as for Nana, she 
suggested it herself.” 

Miles had always been included in Osprey's for¬ 
mal invitations, whether present or not, and had, 
in fact, attended once and contributed not unpleas¬ 
antly to the evening. 

“I'm afraid I can't promise for my husband,” 
said Moira slowly. 

“ H'm. That's too bad. But I can count on you 
and your friend, Mr. Blaydon, anyway?” 

“I should love to bring him,” she replied and 
paused. ... It was better, she thought, to have 


244 BLINDFOLD 

matters understood. . . . “My husband . . . 
won’t come back here,” she went on. “He has 
left me.” 

“It was that,” be asked kindly, “the news you 
had?’ 

“Yes, he wrote me a letter.” 

Osprey spoke quietly but she was conscious of 
the emotion in his voice. 

“And you will accept that? You will not seek 
him, try to bring him back?” 

“No,” she replied. “Too much has happened 
before this. It is over.” 

“You poor girl. You’ve suffered over it.” 

“I put a good deal into it. . . . But this had to 
happen. Miles must have no ties.” 

Osprey’s animation returned and he spoke in 
a more impersonal tone. 

“Perhaps you’re right. I think the young man 
has not grown up in spite of his years. But he 
may find himself. They have a kind of strength, 
fellows like that, a kind of terrible strength that 
no one suspects. I’ve seen his type before. 
The fact is,” he added, with a half serious smile, 
“I’ve been something of the sort myself. It’s 
often hard to locate the origin of a fool’s folly, 
but I think in my case it was an experience I had 
when I was a boy. It wasn’t a peccadillo with me. 
It haunted me for years, so much that I can’t 
talk freely about it to this day. It made life a 
desperate adventure; it was at the back of most 


BLINDFOLD 245 

of my troubles. . . .” He laughed. “I seem like 
an old fool to be telling you all this. And truly 
my nightmares appear absurd to me now.” 

Moira laughed a little bitterly. 4 ‘Something 
happened to me too when I was young. . . . But 
I am free. ... I tore myself free from it.” 

“I thought so,” he said gently. “There is a 
great difference in our ages, but if I may say so, 
we seem to have—well, had something alike to 
face in life. No, I do not mean just that—it’s pre¬ 
sumptuous. I have never, I think, before met any 
woman quite like you. Strength and the genius 
for insight, such as yours, rarely meet in the same 
body. ’ ’ 

A hungry intensity in his words escaped him 
unawares. Though he had spoken nothing of sig¬ 
nificance, the feeling that shook him reached her 
through the dusk with sinister force. She had 
felt the same thing before and had had a momen¬ 
tary impulse to run, to break free from it. She 
did not want to be subjected to another tyranny 
of her emotions. . . . Yet she had reasoned with 
herself. Here was a future that could in every 
sense be ideal, a man with whom she had every¬ 
thing in common and whom she knew she could 
trust. . . . 

A moment later he changed the subject and she 
was glad. 

“By the way,” he said, “why not have your 
guest stay over, if he will? You know I’ve extra 


246 


BLINDFOLD 


bedrooms, and there is no reason why he should 
not occupy one as long as he likes.” 

It was a point that had worried and embar¬ 
rassed her, and she was inexpressibly pleased that 
he had thought of it. 

“You’re too good,” she said fervently, “and I 
would love to keep him.” 

They chatted on over impersonal shallows until 
the time came for her to return to the cottage. 


XXV 


As she left him that night she wondered if 
her conscience troubled her. She was certainly 
encouraging Osprey. Standing in her own sitting 
room, she recalled vividly how, when he took her 
hand in good night, she had felt the fierce stream 
that poured through him, and her very silence had 
given him permission to unburden himself. She 
was thankful for his restraint. Moreover her 
silence had been the result of pleasure, and not 
mere lack of words. How little she had known 
of anything quite so contained and yet so over¬ 
powering in Miles. . . . She could respond to 
that, she knew: she had only to yield a little and 
she could respond. 

The thought of Osprey in this personal sense, 
of some one beside her husband in a personal 
sense, caused her to realize how much importance 
she had gone on attaching to Miles. How ridicu¬ 
lous and womanly of her! she reflected. Miles had 
taken his departure, and yet she had not until 
now seemed quite to believe in it. Perhaps even 
yet she did not believe in it. She had told Osprey 
that it was over; she kept repeating to herself that 
it was over. Everything pointed to it, Harlin- 

dew’s own unequivocal statement and her angry 

247 


248 


BLINDFOLD 


resentment of the manner of his desertion, par¬ 
ticularly his letter. But in her real consciousness 
she had continued to expect his return . . . dur¬ 
ing the whole of her talk with Osprey, Miles had 
been present as a reality—a definite bar—in her 
thought. 

But now a new thing happened to her. She 
suddenly faced her whole life spread out before 
her as on a single canvas, or rather as a continu¬ 
ing panorama—and not just one small segment of 
it. Miles had not been her whole life; he had been 
but a part. He might have continued to be that 
part indefinitely and still not become her whole 
life. She had been magnifying him until she had 
lost sight of the rest, all that other strange web 
of adventure and catastrophe which had included 
her birth, her childhood, her love for Hal, her 
tragic discovery, her runaway, her struggle to 
help herself. . . . That would go on, no matter 
what happened, whether Miles returned or stayed 
away, and it would go on according to her own 
terms. 

The notion of herself as an entity, surviving, 
growing, separate and alone, filled her for the first 
time with a curious excitement. It released so 
many fresh and irresistible currents within her. 
She began to think more consciously of other men, 
of Potter Osprey in particular. She rose and 
went out into the orchard. The painter had had 
constructed a table and seats for them earlier in 


BLINDFOLD 249 

the summer, and she sat down in one of the gaily 
painted stationary benches which gave the chil¬ 
dren so much pleasure. They recalled to her his 
scores of other attentions; the flowers and deli¬ 
cacies of one sort or another which he had sent 
down regularly by Nana, his numerous subter¬ 
fuges to help her with money, the little comforts 
that he had added to the house, his presents 
to young Miles and Joanna. These things, of 
which her husband—most younger men indeed— 
would never have thought, were dear to her. And 
once he had hinted, in a joking manner, of ‘ i leav¬ 
ing her the cottage’ ’ in his will. 

“You can’t tell—I may be knocked off some 
day,” he had said. “I’ve become such an absent- 
minded countryman that I’m always a little sur¬ 
prised to find myself alive after crossing a New 
York street.” 

She had turned such overtures off with pleasant¬ 
ries, which they deserved, and yet she had enter¬ 
tained them; they had wooed her and become a 
part of her dilatory dreaming. As she sat there 
in the caressingly cool night she felt this keenly; 
she felt a sense of permanency and peace under 
the protecting boughs of the orchard. She could 
not remember such a feeling since long ago at 
Thornhill. 

She rose reluctantly and went into the house. 
Unquestionably she had reached a point where 
she could regard Osprey’s passion without dis- 


250 


BLINDFOLD 


turbance; and yet she longed for a temporary 
refuge from it, knowing that at any moment they 
might be brought together by some turn of the 
conversation such as that to-night and his reserve 
would give way. She wanted to escape that con¬ 
tingency for a long time, to think out her relation¬ 
ship to the future. But she had no reasonable 
means or excuse to flee. Her plans had not been 
made for the winter, and according to their in¬ 
formal agreement she was to remain in the cottage 
another month. 

Bobert Blaydon’s visit furnished a safe diver¬ 
sion for three days. She was able to keep him 
that long through the insistent hospitality of Os¬ 
prey, and the fact that the two took a strong 
liking to each other. They sat up late together 
in the studio one night over a fine brand of Scotch 
whisky which Blaydon had brought with him, and 
the younger man submitted amiably to a question¬ 
ing about Moira which disclosed little more than 
that he had been her boyhood companion at one 
time, and her circumstances had once been opu¬ 
lent. He told Osprey, however, that he had heard 
his own name often. 

“Yes?” inquired his host. “Well, perhaps 
that’s natural, as you say we have been fellow 
townsmen.” 

“Fact is,” replied Blaydon, “I’ve an aunt out 
there who has become vastly interested in paint- 


BLINDFOLD 251 

ers, in her old age, and I’ve heard her speak of 
you. A Mrs. Seymour.’’ 

“Don’t ask me to remember names back home,” 
laughed Osprey. “You would think me a pretty 
determined exile if I told you how long it had 
been since I was there.” 

“In any case, she’ll be much excited when I tell 
her that I have met you,” said the other, reflect¬ 
ing on the humour and difficulty of his situation, 
in which discretion constrained him with Osprey 
from telling Moira’s connection to his aunt, and 
with his aunt from telling Moira’s connection 
with Osprey. 

“Mysteries are a damned nuisance among such 
likeable people,” he concluded to himself. “I 
hope this one gets cleared up some day.” And 
his conviction was that it would. 


XXVI 


Moira awoke late, long after Potter Osprey had 
departed for the city, where he was to meet Roget 
and return with him in the car some time that 
night. 

It was her last week in the cottage. A few days 
after the departure of Rob Blaydon for the west, 
Elsie Jennings had paid her a visit and talked. 
Miles Harlindew was living with a young woman 
in the Village. There was a rumour of their going 
to Europe together. . . . Moira suppressed a 
twinge at this, in which at first there was more 
of sardonic humour than of pain. The pain came 
sharply afterward, hut it did not remain long this 
time, and it left her at last aloof. She no longer 
felt the vestige of an obstacle to following her 
own inclinations, and she also had no further de¬ 
fence against Osprey’s attentions. 

The growth of understanding between them 
was almost wordless, monosyllabic. It made her 
intensely happy to discover in his eyes how much 
she was bringing to him. A long time would have 
to elapse before she could give a worthy response 
to that emotion, but she felt that it would 
come. . . . 

The troublesome details of her future were 
therefore on this morning a matter of no concern 

252 


BLINDFOLD 


253 


to her at all. What filled her with delight was the 
immediate present. Never had she seen such 
weather as that October day, or if she had, never 
before had she been alive to its innumerable as¬ 
pects at once. After the dubiousness and suffer¬ 
ing of the past few weeks she felt both older and 
younger, both cleansed by experience and ready 
for more to come. Her whole womanly being was 
gathering itself for something new, and she meant 
to grasp it to the full. The ship’s engines were 
throbbing in her blood and the open sea lay be¬ 
yond, but her hand was firm on the wheel. . . . 

It was a day to idle, one of those days when the 
children were positively in the way and work im¬ 
possible. It was a day of heady egoism, of revel¬ 
ing in her securely felt advantages, and a certain 
sense of having won the spurs of lawlessness. 
She would be restless until to-morrow when the 
men came. What fine friends they were! 

It was eleven o’clock, and, following her usual 
custom, she walked down to the grey metal box in 
which both her own mail and that of the Osprey 
house was deposited. She half expected to hear 
from Rob Blaydon who had promised to write 
her from Thornhill. 

She ran through the letters quickly. There 
were none for her, but she went back to look again 
at a large envelope addressed to Osprey. She 
supposed she had done this simply because it was 
larger than the others and extended out around 


254 


BLINDFOLD 


them while she held them in her hand. But there 
had been another reason, as she discovered on 
second examination. The handwriting was famil¬ 
iar. . . . 

She realized in fact that she was looking at the 
handwriting of Mathilda Seymour. She could not 
have mistaken it, even with nothing else to guide 
her, but there was the postmark of her city. 
She turned the envelope over, only to find con¬ 
firmation in the return address. 

She caught herself almost in the gesture of 
tearing it open. Her first thought had been that 
it was her letter, no matter whom it was addressed 
to. But she stopped herself in time. She could 
not open Potter Osprey’s letter. She wondered 
that she could have had the impulse to do so. Yet, 
as if she feared the temptation would be too 
strong, she kept repeating to herself, “I must not 
open it, I must not open it. . . The temptation 
passed and did not return, but her disturbance 
and her curiosity were more stubborn. 

It was almost uncanny that Mathilda should be 
writing to Potter Osprey. . . . 

But was it? Now she remembered he had told 
her the place of his birth—a mere conversational 
allusion, which she had passed over quickly, not 
wishing to discuss the city. It had surprised her 
mildly; then she had recalled in passing that 
years ago there had been some people named Os¬ 
prey whom she never knew. Could Mathilda have 


BLINDFOLD 


255 


known them? Could she have known the painter, 
perhaps in his youth? It was unlikely; she had 
never mentioned the name in Moira’s hearing. 

There was nothing to be gained on that tack, 
and soon she was off on a more fruitful one. Bob 
Blaydon had told her about Mathilda’s new hob¬ 
bies, one of them helping young artists, another 
buying pictures for the city museum. She had 
drifted out of social life and interested herself in 
a little club, not very prosperous, where the ar¬ 
tists of the city met. 

Here was a possible even a probable, explana¬ 
tion. Osprey was a native painter, who had 
gained reputation elsewhere. He had been a 
struggling boy at home, and what could be 
more natural than that Mathilda should decide 
the city must be enriched by one of his works? Or 
if this was not exactly the case, there were a dozen 
other reasons why, on behalf of the club of which 
Bob had spoken, she might be communicating with 
him. 

The reason was enough for Moira, or at least 
she made it suffice. She would find out the truth 
before long, and in any case it could not concern 
herself. For it was incredible to her that Bob, in 
the face of their definite understanding, had men¬ 
tioned her at home. ‘ ‘ At home! ’ ’ How naturally 
she used the phrase. Well, there was much to be 
cleared up—both there and here. She troubled 
herself no more about the letter. She laid it with 


256 


BLINDFOLD 


the others on Osprey’s table, took the children up 
to Nana to look after, and went off for a long 
walk. By ten o’clock that night she was in bed 
asleep. 

• •••••• 

The two men drove up to the farm house, in ac¬ 
cordance with their plan, at about two o’clock in 
the morning in Roget’s car. They lingered in the 
hall and studio for a few moments and went up¬ 
stairs, the painter taking his mail with him. 

Some hours later the same sound woke not only 
Roget, but Moira, down in the cottage. It was a 
sharp report, and her first clear thought was that 
a passing automobile had back-fired, perhaps 
Emmet Roget’s, just arriving. She sat up for a 
time listening and then prepared to sleep again. 
Some one knocked on the outside door. 

It was the producer, looking ominous as he 
stood in the half darkness, in a long black dress¬ 
ing gown. 

“Mrs. Harlindew, an accident has happened,” 
he said gravely. “I think, perhaps, I had better 
ask you to step up to the house with me.” 

She went with him up the steep bank, thor¬ 
oughly unnerved. His hold on her arm was firm 
and decidedly helpful on the rough path. They 
passed through the lower part of the house and 
upstairs without a word. She knew before she 
arrived what had happened and dared not ask 
the question on her lips. 


BLINDFOLD 257 

Osprey lay on his bed dressed, with a small, 
old-fashioned revolver in his hand. He was not 
breathing. The round, bleeding wound was near 
one temple. On the table beside him lay a photo¬ 
graph of herself, face up, the face of a half-smil¬ 
ing girl of eighteen. Beside it was Mathilda’s 
letter. Moira snatched the letter and read, at 
first rapidly, then very attentively and slowly. 
“My dear Mr. Osprey,” it began: 

You will not remember an old woman of 
your native city, but I used to meet your 
father at the Round Robin Club long ago and 
admired his wit and character. I was even 
introduced to you once, when you were a very 
little boy. You had been left there one night 
to be taken home. Since then, of course, I 
have followed, though at a distance, your 
progress in the world as an artist. But it 
is not merely to presume on this slender ac¬ 
quaintance that I write to you. 

I have a strange story to tell. There has 
lived in this house for thirty years, ostensibly 
as a servant but in fact more a companion 
and friend to me, a woman named Ellen Syd¬ 
ney. She came to my house as Mrs. Ellen 
Williams and brought with her a baby daugh¬ 
ter, whom she called Moira. I adopted this 
child and raised her and loved her as though 
she had been my own. She believed she was 


258 


BLINDFOLD 


my own until her nineteenth year, when she 
discovered the truth. She proved to be as 
high-spirited as she was adorable, for al¬ 
though her life here offered every advantage, 
and was, I know, one long unclouded happi¬ 
ness, she gave it up in a day on learning her 
true parentage. I can understand that spirit 
and yet I have suffered cruelly because of her 
act. She left without a word, effacing every 
trace of herself, and from that day to this I 
have never been able to find her, though I 
have made repeated efforts. I had little hope, 
it is true, of persuading her to return even if 
I did so, knowing her nature and her capacity 
to carry out her own decisions. 

I am convinced she has spent a large part of 
her life in New York, for at first, certain 
communications came from her there. Fur¬ 
thermore she loved the study of art and could 
only have followed it to her taste in that city. 
She may still be there. For that reason I 
write, thinking it possible if you have not met 
her you will, and she will then have a friend 
who has good reason to protect her. I am 
sending the latest photograph I possess of 
her. 

You will ask why I have never addressed 
you before. It is because I have always hesi¬ 
tated to ask Ellen the name of her child ’s 
father. Moira, herself, is in ignorance of it. 


BLINDFOLD 


259 


Only a month ago Ellen was persuaded, by 
the arguments I have used above, to tell her 
story to me in confidence, and now I write 
with her consent. To complete the coinci¬ 
dence, my nephew, Robert Blaydon, having 
met you, has given me your address. 

You may be sure that should you ever meet 
with your daughter or be able to send us 
word of her, two lonely old women will be 
grateful. 

I have considered that you may not be the 
kind of man who will care to receive this let¬ 
ter, but I do not believe that is possible. The 
passage of time softens our errors and may 
even turn them into blessings. 

Yours very sincerely, 

Mathilda Seymour. 

Moira put down the letter and sank beside the 
bed. She threw her arms over the figure that lay 
there. 

“But, father,’’ she cried softly, “I could have 
loved you as my father, too. ...” 

The tall figure of Roget was standing beside 
her, with bent head, his penetrating glance, 
full of profound compassion, searching the face 
of his friend. 

“Perhaps he could not, Mrs. Harlindew,” he 
said, as if thinking aloud. 

THE END 





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